Design fosters cultural understanding
Culture
Effective design focuses clearly on the audience, the customer or the ultimate beneficiary. The design process begins with research into how real people behave, often in the form of ethnographic research. The intent of successful design is to find human-centered solutions that will really work to address a problem and to do so in the context of existing cultures. This is an important issue in an ever-shrinking world in which design must address the unique needs of many different cultures without imposing values upon them. AIGA is committed to assisting designers in understanding different cultures, through activities focused on multiculturalism, developing channels for U.S. designers to build relationships with designers from other cultures, and in diversifying the profession.