Culture & Context

Nation Insights
Foundational &
Exploratory Research
Developing meaningful & distinctive ideas Understanding Meaning and Motivation
Empathy is overrated*.
(* When focusing solely on user thoughts and behaviours!)
Indonesia = high context, collective society
Empathy or telepathy?
To empathise is to understand a person’s frame of reference
Design research: empathy + context

+
Brand research: psychological depth + cultural meaning

+
Big impactful ideas often lie in things people don’t say or reveal

CONTEXT + CULTURE
Context
Context = circumstances or setting in which a product is used

Physical environment Social environment

The house Family, friends, neighbours
The neighbourhood Community leaders / influencers
Spaces where products are used Social rituals
Tools / props used
Searching online: humanising smartphones in the kampung
Pesantren Life: Collective Necessity
Sachet Subscriptions: cash flow first mentality
How

Spaces
Usage / consumption spaces
Snoop around the home: adjacent categories, storage
Walk around the neighborhood

Social
Cross generational interviews
Friendship trios
Community group discussions
Stakeholder interviews
Culture
Culture = shared ideas, beliefs, tensions, desires in society
Cultural roots of super premium (statusful) drinking

King & his people Serving the King Among Kings

Bapak-ism Upeti Priyayi Brothers

Premium bottle design = nyuguhin

Aesthetic codes of glassware Aqua gelas x nyuguhin rituals Premium hosting culture and
Glass storage & display norms
Beer positioning: Evolution of masculine expression
How

Media / content consumption diaries

‘Thinker’ interviews (e.g. academics historians, journalists)

Semiotics (symbolic meaning of objects, rituals, etc.)

Literature review (not academic papers, but how a category

is talked about in texts)
Conclusions
Empathy is to feel what
another person is
experiencing...
...by understanding their
context and frame of
reference
 Zoom in Zoom out
Experience the Make sense of it through
user’s experience an understanding of
the physical, social and
cultural context
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