Culture: A Source of Product Innovation

There is little in-depth research that can assist designers to use culture as a catalyst for designing innovative products. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by exploring how culture can be used as a source of product innovation within Botswana’s context. The concept of culture and design are intertwined, thus modification in the former evolution both reflect and determine developments in the latter. The paper discusses an experimental design approach conducted with design students at the University of Botswana. The approach analysed and identified socio-cultural factors that impact upon design and challenged participants to transform and encode these factors into product design features. The visual and textual data generated by participants was analysed by the qualitative content analysis methodology. The paper concludes by discussing how designers can integrate socio-cultural factors consciously rather than ‘incidentally’ in order to design innovative and culturally sensitive products.