UNDERSTANDING MATERIAL CULTURE: EMOTIONS, MAKING AND VALUE, A PRODUCT DESIGNER'S PERSPECTIVE

The concepts of emotion, making and value, while not new or alien to the researchers in design, have been looked at mainly from the point of view of end user of the design. This paper aims to discover and understand these concepts and their relationship with each other from the point of view of cultural anthropology and tries to compare and relate these two points of view to product design discipline. The understanding of the topic here is based on the review of papers published by various anthropology researchers and ethnographers on the work of studies in material culture and ethnographic studies as well as a design study conducted to experience the multidisciplinary approach towards product design. In the review the authors discover and discuss the social aspects of emotions, making and value and the way they are connected to each other socially, through material creations. Authors go on to visually illustrate their understanding of the hierarchy of human-object relation and the activities and the value associated with the five states of this relation. This understanding is discussed through the lens of emotional product design, design research and business research to expose some significant areas of knowledge creation for the increasingly unsustainable world. These opportunities of knowledge creation, at the intersection of cultural anthropology and product design, are discussed for the benefit of product design practice and product design education.