Abstract: In the context of product design and when it comes to studying the physical forms in nature, aesthetic norms sometime can function as the filters that make the complex structures of reality seem only as the basic geometries, proportions and patterns in our eyes. In other words, although we look at the complex structure but the mind only picks the. It  can even get more problematic when we take this manipulated, simplified and reduced perception of a phenomenon as the reality of it. This means we are depriving ourselves of seeing a huge aesthetic portion of reality in natural phenomenon which, could be of a great potential for pushing the boundaries of the aesthetic norms in the field of product design. This paper proposes an approach that revolves around minimising the dominance  of reductionist mind in observing and studying the mater of forms in nature in order to get closer to the complex reality of them. This approach is presented under the title of The Theory of Design Naturally and consists of a collection of principles that hypothetically would help designers to deal with the complexity of forms with less reductionist approach.

July 2010

Abstract: The issue of globalization has been a major concern in many countries around the world and has led to the formation and consolidation of different approaches, such as localization strategies that share a focus on the design and management of culture. However, in some countries, including Iran, there is a deep gap between the two factors of culture and technology and its products. The solution to this challenge is to focus more on culture-based design and to seek a way to get rid of superficiality in this area. This paper proposes CAL futurology method as a suitable way to help designers to pay closer attention to culture, and through a series of experiments, it measures the effectiveness of this method in action. The results show that using this method in culture-based design is beneficial and can lead the designer to cultural considerations in a structured way. Having that said, it is also clear that it cannot cover the whole design process alone and requires a combination of complementary methods.
Keywords: Culture-Based Design; Layered Analysis of Causes; Layers of Recognition; Effective Interaction

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