Local Cultures – Global Spaces
Abstract
Shwayˣ is a product inspired by the Arabic phrase shway-shway. The Arabic word, shway, means “a bit;” but repeated, it means, “slow down,” or, “one step at a time,” and expresses a cultural preference for a patient, measured approach to life. Shwayˣ turns this local wisdom into a tool anyone can use to plan the day ahead, by embossing a strip of paper with the word shway at regular intervals, producing a customized daily checklist and a reminder to slow down and live in the moment. What began as a student project in a graduate design course has evolved, with support from the Boost Lab (a product development incubation platform), into a commercial product proposal. As a souvenir tied to a particular place, Shwayˣ aims to do more than simply represent that place; it is designed to capture, preserve, embody and disseminate cultural wisdom. The project’s evolution, through a series of revisions, demonstrates a design-led approach to product development. Stages of development included: 1. Concept formalization. 2. Visual refinement. 3. Functionality. 4. Relatability. 5. Simplification. 6. Visual identity. During each revision, I revisited two key questions: How useful is the product? and: Do users understand its function and meaning? It took a great deal of trial and error to achieve positive answers to these questions. A school project is successful if it gives form to a concept, but a commercial product needs to offer customers added value. Shwayˣ demonstrates how local cultural insight can inspire a product with global appeal.
Yeon Geong Hwang is an intuitive designer with a critical mind. Playful nature always plays part in her design work, because she sees it as an essential part of human experience. Her creative work builds on observations of patterns and cultures into novel human interactions. Yeon is currently a Digital Designer at Grey Doha. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Design and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from VCUarts Qatar; where her dedication was awarded with a Graduate Fellowship, a QF Scholarship of Creative Innovation, and graduating as an undergraduate class Valedictorian.