Vol. 4, No. 1, Design Management Journal 2008

Ashwini Asokan, User Experience Group, Intel Corporation; Michael J. Payne, User Experience Group, Intel Corporation

More than ever before, booming economies and growing levels of disposable income have placed many countries on the global consumer market landscape. Users, embedded in their own cultures and societies, are also consumers of global products and information in their own localized contexts. A range of companies, from the tech arena to the food business, are striving to carve a niche in these countries, trying to redesign themselves to cater to local cultural needs. Most of these companies try to manufacture products for a global market and achieve large-scale volumes in production. However, this often requires the coordination of multiple companies to manufacture a single product, companies that may be situated in different cultures and countries. Designers, design managers, and user experience professionals across these organizations face a tremendous challenge against the backdrop of this changing landscape. With local practices and cultures on one hand, and large global corporations and global lifestyles situated all over the globe on the other, designers and social scientists are challenged with striking the right balance between these two ends. This paper uses examples from Intel's Digital Home User Experience Group to highlight how user experience professionals can manage and design culturally rich experiences while sustaining large-scale production, as well as managing smooth working processes among organizations situated across the globe.

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