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Cultural diversity is a driving force for the development and progress of a society and influences products originating from a society’s thinking style based on cultural diversity. Cultures from many countries have been brought into Taiwan over time and left their footprints on this beautiful island, constructing unique cultural contexts. The historical review shows that design context derives from arts. The cultural diversity formed through the encountering and mixing of various cultures can be regarded as a valuable asset to Taiwan and facilitates the expansion of cultural horizon of Taiwanese people.
As a society has no longer been dominated by one culture but encompasses diverse cultures, the cultural stereotypes should not be used to reinforce the superiority and inferiority of different cultures but to recognize cultural differences and highlight the uniqueness of specific cultures. Cultural bias is developed typically based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and politics. Adopting psychology and sociology as anchors, this study examined the historical contexts at various time periods from a macro perspective through literature review to investigate the role of cultural diversity in the design field over time. Focus group discussion and in-depth interviews with experts and scholars were conducted to understand whether the cultural heritage and the development of design thinking continue to influence the creative thinking in today’s society. Whether the design thinking involves cultural bias because of fixed labels and stereotypes was also explored.
The analysis results showed that the cultural diversity in Taiwan does not directly influence the design field. The definition of cultural cognition is influenced by the inheritance of cultures through social environment and education. Regardless of the rule of thumb in design operations, the herd behavior influenced by the mainstream social value, or cultural limitations, the existence of cultural bias in the design field is only due to consumers’ subjective attitudes and different cultural habits. Therefore, the preliminary exploration of this study was expected to provide new insights and suggestions for the design field and make contributions to the future development of creative design thinking.
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