**4. Conclusion**

76 Industrial Design – New Frontiers

Furniture concept Portuguese traits Lusophone traits No Portuguese or

Table 16. Survey seeking the validation of the results of the studies reported in this chapter

The results of the survey do not lead to consider that the results convey clearly identifiable cultural traits associated with the Portuguese and Lusophone cultures, although these vary

 Fig. 10. Renders of "Vale" living room furniture line based on the Portuguese cultural traits and their corresponding product technical attributes (designed by the second author).

 Fig. 11. Renders of "Império" living room furniture line based on the Lusophone cultural traits and their corresponding product technical attributes (designed by the second author).

In the second part of this chapter, cultural traits were the starting point to reach at the product profiles that were used as the basis for the design of two furniture lines. The scope of the work reported is not limited to furniture and is deemed applicable in a wider scope, considering its genesis and methodology, based on a literature review of cultural traits, taking into account

Advancing the knowledge on the transfer of cultural traits to product design features may require further inquiry, since the projects reported in this chapter did not lead to conclusive results towards accepting or rejecting the hypothesis which was presented in the methods

the personalities of consumer products and consulting industrial design students.

**3.7 Discussion of the results of the five studies presented** 

"Império" – Lusophone A 8 8 5 "Bloco" – Lusophone B 3 9 9 "Flex 2" – Lusophone C 2 4 15 "Vale" – Portuguese A 5 6 10 "Leveza" – Portuguese B 7 7 7 "Flex" – Portuguese C 2 8 11

(21 respondents – second year undergraduate industrial design students).

from product concept to product concept.

Lusophone traits

One of the underlying assumptions for this chapter was that there is a space yet to be filled by a culturally inspired design current to take the space of design production with a Lusophone flavour, for international dissemination. Another underlying assumption is that design may be inspired by culture, and a direct transfer of cultural traits to product attributes may be pursued, with the support of product personality attributes, as a mediator. The results of both streams of analysis (Fig. 1) presented in this chapter were found not to match entirely. The product feature profiles encountered in the sampled Lusophone design production (first part of the chapter) do not match entirely the product feature profiles obtained from transferring selected cultural traits (positive and neutral) to technical features. This suggests that there is a space yet to be filled by a culturally inspired design current to take the space of design production with a Lusophone flavour, for international dissemination. This mismatch also suggests that culturally inspired design may yield novel design concepts and trigger an array of new proposals that cater to varying tastes and sensibilities. This may contribute to more visibility of designs from particular regions of the globe, opposing the paradigm of mainstream design production, according to the traditional and well established design schools and currents. In a globalized world, culturally inspired design carries the promise to bring more cultural inclusion into the design discourse and to promote added differentiation of consumer choice of design objects.
