A Dramatic Day in the Life of a Shared Indian Mobile Phone.

The paper explores the area of culture strain and how it affects the usage and hence the design of products and services. In this era of globalisation, it is increasingly important to create a tool kit of methods and techniques that will address cross cultural use of a product. This is particularly important in cases where the product is designed in and for a particular kind of culture and then it is ‘exported' for use in widely different cultures. Till date, it has been common to ‘localise' such a product by looking at the dominant cultural characteristics of the culture where the product is being exported for use. This paper takes the view that it is equally important to look at the culture (where the product is being exported for use) not just as it is supposed to be but also as it is. The difference between the ‘cultural ideal' and ‘cultural practice' [1] does indeed provide some rich opportunity areas for value added design solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]