Keywords

1 Introduction

Culture is “The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively” [10]. Koentjaraningrat defines that culture as a “power of mind” in the form of creativity, intention and taste, while culture is the result of creation, intention, and taste [2]. According to Liliweri, culture is the life view of a group of people in the form of behaviours, beliefs, values, and symbols they receive unconsciously that are all inherited through the process of communication from one generation to the next [3]. By all of those definition, the definition can be simplify as ‘manifestation of human thought process that inherited from time to time’.

There are various types of cultural products, from tangible aspect such as artefacts, behavioural aspect that involving cultural tools, to any intangible aspect as cultural norms and values. Koentjaraningrat also distinguishes three forms of culture: (1) The form of culture as a complex of ideas, ideas, values, norms, rules and so on. (2) The form of culture as a complex of activity and the patterned actions of man in a society. (3) The form of culture as objects of human works [2]. Among the types, products that are tangible can be a representative symbol of particular cultural group.

Culture and development of the times is one of the dynamics in the growth of creative industry. In the context of globalization, local culture can be a source of inspiration to develop creative products. The development of the times indirectly changed the lifestyle of society slowly. These lifestyle changes also affects cultural products that are no longer a product that fulfil market needs. Cultural products that used to be functional transformed into symbolic products, where buyers of the products no longer buy because of its function, but rather because of historical and symbolic factors over the identity of a particular culture as an art.

The effort to preserve the cultural product already taken by conducting some studies and experiment. One of the solution is by doing cultural transformation by transferring the values from cultural product into a new product more relevant form that needs by market to face the change of times. According to Lin, changes in consumer perception regarding innovation are also important in cultural product design. In addition, “Culture” plays an important role in the design field, and “cross cultural design” will be a key design evaluation point in the future. [6]. That is why the ABCDE (Art, Business, Creative, Design, and E-business) model of the cultural transformation model becomes a relevant way to explore cultural wealth, both in the context of cultural preservation as well as in the business model context. To turn “Art” into Business, we need “Creativity” and “Design”, which allows the creative products to be transformed into “E-business” [7].

Nevertheless, the model is still focused on exploring the cultural richness and adapting into market needs by making design changes to creating new products with the same spirit with the original one. Meanwhile, in the effort to preserve a culture, the focus should not only focus on cultural products as a representation of a particular culture, but also should be explore wider to the cultural actors themselves. Thus, through the ABCDE model, the values contained in cultural products can still be conveyed through new creative products, while the original product can still be found and produced by indigenous cultural actors for specific market segmentation. When designers comes to the cultural society researching the cultural products and get the idea to create a new cultural product that will give them both financial and non-financial benefits, the cultural actors and the village where the culture originated have not changed much and still living in low economic circumstances.

While designers gain profit and economic change, cultural actors are still untouched. That is why a complementary model is needed to provide a holistic view of the process of cultural exploration into a creative product, so that the model not only focuses on how to preserve the cultural product, but also to have a positive impact on original cultural society as an actors. This paper encourage to pay attention to the other aspect of cultural preservation. Especially in the case of cultural actor that still preserve the culture and depend their economic life by doing the cultural stuff.

Design must be an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the needs of men. It must be more research-oriented, and we must stop defiling the earth itself with poorly-designed objects and structures [11]. This study aims to provide a complementary model of ABCDE model as a model in exploring the culture into a better model so that it can provide impact on humanity, society, especially the community of cultural actors themselves. So that the exploration of culture and its use in the design of creative products, but also gives a good impact on the cultural ecosystem itself with due regard to the business model of cultural actors.

2 Research Framework

Culture and design have a close relationship in the development of century. In the era of globalization, people’s lifestyles change supported by technological advances becomes more easy. In the context of design and creative industries, culture is a source of inspiration for creating a creative product. Culture plays an important role in the field of design and cross cultural design will become a key point in design evaluation in the future [6]. That because the change of life style impact of product need. Culture could be adapt to create a new product that still relevant to the market, not only for the function adaptation but also in the level of visual, shape, and the other element which could be an inspiration.

Besides its own function and meaning, the cultural product is rich of value from the particular cultural society. As an inspiring idea, culture could be a diversification or identity of particular nation in the global market competition. With all of the potency, the value of culture should be preserve with the proper way to maintain the wealth of cultural value.

The effort to preserve the culture in design field mostly focusing about preserve the cultural product itself such as artefact for its aesthetic, function, shape, and meaning. Just few of the studies gives a concern of the actor itself. The exploration still didn’t touch the aspect of humanity which discuss about the ecosystem of the cultural source especially to the cultural actor that still preserve cultural product by create it and depend their life by selling the product. Pirous in an interview about visual communication design said “Science of visual communication design is not just design to fulfill the needs of the industry. But able to make a lonely city into a shining city” [10]. To get a better understanding of preserving culture by encourage designer empathy in cultural society design, the Fig. 1 shows that the flow from the culture as source has two aspect of concern, cultural product and cultural actor, by conducting proper research the flow than create a model for exploring cultural product as inspiration to create new creative product, also create a model for empathy to create a better ecosystem of cultural society (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1.
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ABCDE model for E-business model [7]

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Fig. 2.
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Framework of design model for cultural society

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When the cultural product already switch from functional product into symbolic product of particular area because of the life style change, the cultural product can still be preserve by transforming the spirit into new creative product, and also create a better design model for its own ecosystem by conducting design for cultural society. According to Papanek in his book Design for the real world, in the chapter of design responsibility express his argument about creating “How does the professional stand for this? designer help to wield power to change, modify, eliminate or evolve totally new patterns. Have we educate our clients, our sales force, the public? have the designer attempt to stand for integrity and better way? have we tried to push forward, not only in the market place, but by considering the needs of people?” [11].

3 Methodology

To get a better understanding of exploring culture as source of inspiration in creating new creative product, Lin conduct a model for turning “Art” into “Business” is realized, while the process is combined with “Creativity”, “Design”, and “E-Business” to transform the aesthetic values into commerce by service innovation [6].

Lin conduct a step to explore culture into a business model by set a scenario from Inspiration by Culture, idea to create a product, implementation in daily life with design process, and the next step is complete the product by brand [5].

The model above help us to get a picture about exploring culture into business model. In context of design for cultural society, to get a better understanding about the business impact to the actor, there will be one element of “monetizing for business” add to the model. So the model will be complete as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.
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Design thinking to creating business model from culture

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From the figure above we can see the correlation from the idea and the actor behind each element. “Inspiration from culture” is operate by Inheritors as the person who still preserve the culture by creating the cultural product and most of them still depend their economic life by doing a cultural stuff. “The process of ideation to create product” mostly doing by researcher, even sometimes designer also does the research. “The implementation stage in daily life” is conduct by designer to create a daily product. “The completion of production by brand” are involving the factory to maintain its quality. The stage of “Monetizing by business” are the element of understanding the market as final purpose of process to get the advantage (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Design thinking breakdown to creating business model from culture and its actor

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This study aims to provide a complementary model of ABCDE model as a model in exploring the culture into a better model so that it can provide impact on humanity, society, especially the community of cultural actors themselves. So that the exploration of culture and its use in the design of creative products, but also gives a good impact on the cultural ecosystem itself with due regard to the business model of cultural actors. From the figure above we know the stage to explore the culture into business and also the actor behind each stage. The figure bellow will explain about mutual correlation and the condition of gain distribution equity (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
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Mutual correlation and gain distribution

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The figure above shows that most of cultural exploration especially in design field area start with the “inheritors” as the cultural actor. Inheritors in this context is not only the terms of individual person who inherit the cultural tradition, but also could be a group of cultural society. Because in some case the place/village where the culture are establish, most villager or the society around also doing the cultural stuff that influence the society. From inheritors the other people that come to the village get the data about the original story or concept of the culture itself, in the academics context we can call it as “researchers” but in some case the designer itself also play a role for the researcher. The next step is about “designer” who can create a concept from the data that they collect directly from the village, or by a documentation/research by the previous researcher as reference. From the data, designer conduct an idea to create IP (Intellectual Property) as product concept to create a prototype. The idea/concept that generate by designer than send to the “manufacturers” to produce the product by mass production by factory. The last step is putting the product that already produce by factory into “market” by setting marketing strategy to focus on particular segmentation, especially global market segmentation.

The process of selling the product in the market gives a feedback to the designer as the creator of concept to create product as advantage feedback, both financially or non-financially. But the problem is While designers gain profit and economic change, cultural actors are still untouched and live with their low economic condition. As mention before, the most reason of this phenomena is because most cultural actor has a limitation of market knowledge. All they know is how to create product by traditional ways as they got from their ancestor. When the market needs already change as the impact of globalization, they still create the same product as they know. Despite a reason of preserving the original idea of culture, the cultural grip of ethic, or the lack of marketing knowledge, the condition put them into the same economic situation.

The designer as the outsider has no boundaries of cultural ethic who get the idea from the culture create a product that inspire from the culture with a relevant function or context to the today’s market. It gives designer opportunity to explore more idea and blending the culture with daily product idea that still need, want, desire by market.

The condition give a wide chance for the designer to do more about cultural society especially in the effort of preserve cultural society in economic case. Its time for the designer to get a bigger picture of preserving culture by put a focus not only in the cultural product but also the cultural actor. So the Science of design is not just design to fulfil the needs of the industry. But able to make an industrial design system into a shining humanity design system. Designers do need to know more about science and engineering, but without becoming scientists or engineers. We must not lose the special talents of designers to make our lives more pleasurable [8].

4 FGHIJ Model for Design in Cultural Society

Preserving culture by paying attention in cultural society especially the inheritor who still doing cultural stuff and depend their economic life in the process, for the practician in the design field, basically give a concern about Fairness, Gain, Humanity, Impact, and Joy in the process of design model (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.
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FGHIJ model fro design thinking in cultural society

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The model will adapt from the design thinking by Tim brown. Generally Tim introduce encourage the designer to give a better impact in design process using design thinking from Empathy, Define, Ideation, Prototype, and Test. Brown and Wyatt [1], describe that to create a design that is relevant to the user, a comprehensive research process that starts from the empathy process, defines the problem, generates the idea, creates the prototype, and tests the user. In context of design for cultural society especially in case of cultural actor that depending their economic life by doing cultural stuff, the design thinking conduct to get the FGHIJ models. The models stand for Fairness, Gain, Humanity, Impact, and Joy.

“Fairness” is about the ‘empathy’ of building the awareness of cultural actor by identify cultural feature that should get an focus attention, the cultural product itself and the role of the cultural actor as the user or creator. So the exploration will be fair in both side cultural product and the actor behind the product itself. After build the awareness of exploration focus, the next step is “Gain” the information of both sides, the cultural product feature and the role of the cultural actor which has a mutual correlation. The information of the relationship will ‘define’ the problem. The “Humanity” stage will focus on generate the ‘idea’ to give a economy benefit in the cultural society by design. By conducting the research of cultural product relationship with the cultural actor, the design process conduct the idea to give the alternative solution in design field. For the example, the designer could give a better ways, tool, or design to solve the problem of production time or marketing challenge. “Impact” aspect is an experiment to create a ‘prototype’ or practical action and expect the positive impact that change the cultural society ecosystem. The process will bring a “Joy” in the economic field by establish a new business model with design as the core of the alternate solution (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.
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FGHIJ model for design in cultural society

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5 Summary

The effort of preserving culture is not only focus to take care the cultural product, but also considering the existence of the cultural actor/practitioner. The cultural actor in this context is the one who depending their economic life by doing cultural stuff. The ABCDE model could be a model to explore the potency of cultural product into business. In the other sides the cultural actor could be explore by setting FGHIJ model to give a positive impact by establish a business model in design context.

Despite the level of each cultural element, Norman in his book Emotional Design, divide a product into three level, Visceral Design, is what nature does. Behavioural Design, is all about use. Reflective Design, its all about message. [9] by break down the feature of the model, the ABCDE model could be a matter of Visceral Design (in the cultural product itself could be break down by three level of design), when the FGHIJ could be a matter of behavioural design, especially in the present business model. The level of reflective design could be gain by combining this two design model from ABCDE to FGHIJ for cultural society (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8.
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Applying design thinking of FGHIJ model in preserving culture

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From the figure above the FGHIJ model is applied to bring the “Fairness” in building the awareness of focus in cultural exploration, both in cultural product and cultural actor in ‘empathy’ process. The exploration in the both sides to “Gain” the information or data to ‘define’ the problem. The next step is focus on “Humanity” aspect to get a better understanding of the problem to do ‘ideation’. “Impact” stage is focus to create a ‘prototype’ of business model by focusing on changing economic ecosystem. The indicator of the process to ‘test’ the model to bring “Joy” in economic system change. By the model the result of this studies shows that designers do need to know more about business model and economic ecosystem, but without becoming an economist or accountant. Designer should not lose the special talents of designers to make the shining cultural society.