Designing Meaning Across Cultures a Framework for HCI from an Interdisciplinary Perspective

Design in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has evolved beyond usability toward systems that offer engaging experiences, systematically leveraging the mechanisms that regulate perception and meaning-making. Ongoing research reveals new layers of complexity regarding the role of context and subjectivity in perception (Levitt-Frank & Shoshana 2023), which risk limiting the transversality of experiences and challenging the creation of universally meaningful interactions (Plocher et al. 2021). Design practice has progressively integrated holistic theories of cognition, leading to structured methods that—borrowing from Norman (2004)—focus on the visceral and behavioral levels of emotion, while the reflective level—the domain of higher-order meaning and identity—remains elusive. This paper proposes an unedited transdisciplinary framework powered by a systemic perspective to coordinate tools and technologies in support of embedding powerful, intersubjective meanings into design. A broad literature was reviewed to: (1) integrate models describing the phenomenology of interaction; (2) analyze the state of the art in cross-cultural HCI design; (3) identify relevant findings in anthropology and psychology and explore their implications for HCI; (4) contextualize cross-cultural design in the aftermath of cultural globalization. Findings show that, just as the embodied nature of perception establishes a shared perceptual baseline (Plocher et al. 2021), cognitive structures exhibit universal patterns as well and while contents and functions may vary, their scaffolding remains stable across human experience (Lang & Kundt 2023). The interdisciplinarity of the proposed framework enables a more systemic and organic understanding of HCI: one that acknowledges complex, evolving phenomena and harnesses the embodied and cognitive foundations of human experience.