Design for Intercultural Experience. A design framework within User Experience Approach

The multicultural society has become a widespread phenomenon nowadays in which foreign people often offer services to locals. The services provided by foreigners can be stereotyped or rejected due to people’s mental frames formed by different cultures that call for designers’ contributions to service experience in the multicultural environment. This research aims at helping UX designers to gain a comprehension of values in cultural diversity to improve the cross-cultural experience through their designerly expertise. Through the study of cultural models in sociology and anthropology and the study of the investigation tools in experience design, the research adopted an ethnographic approach within UX tools. The fieldwork takes place in the Chinese catering services in Milan and consists of three phases: snapshotting the context, identifying the diversity, and representing the cultural value. The research developed the Framework of Designing for Intercultural Experience which can be regarded as a reference for cross-cultural designers to refine design questions, to plan the design ethnographic practices, and to identify appropriate research tools in the field.