Abstract
The Culture Communications Model (CCM) provides a framework for structured sensemaking grounded in everyday visual culture. It assists designers and non-designers in navigating complex contexts through four interrelated domains – physical, social, commercial and media – each examined via interpretive filters such as norms, gender, class, power and capital. Through iterative processes of finding, understanding and synthesizing, the CCM structures visual inquiry as an embodied and dialogical practice. By translating observations through these filters and reconfiguring them with conceptual tools, users can reveal hidden relationships, challenge assumptions and generate new perspectives on context and identity. The model transforms diffuse contextual information into interpretable patterns and fosters awareness of the sociocultural conditions shaping perception and design. In positioning design as a form of visual anthropology, the CCM frames the ordinary as a site of insight – rendering the familiar visible, meaningful and creatively generative, while supporting an accessible and distributed approach to visual-cultural understanding.
Keywords
design sensemaking, visual culture, reflective practice, design anthropology
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1967
Citation
Sundqvist, P., Wikberg-Nilsson, Å., and Pettersson, L. (2026) The culture communications model: Visual sensemaking and the everyday in design practice, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1967
Creative Commons License
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Included in
The culture communications model: Visual sensemaking and the everyday in design practice
The Culture Communications Model (CCM) provides a framework for structured sensemaking grounded in everyday visual culture. It assists designers and non-designers in navigating complex contexts through four interrelated domains – physical, social, commercial and media – each examined via interpretive filters such as norms, gender, class, power and capital. Through iterative processes of finding, understanding and synthesizing, the CCM structures visual inquiry as an embodied and dialogical practice. By translating observations through these filters and reconfiguring them with conceptual tools, users can reveal hidden relationships, challenge assumptions and generate new perspectives on context and identity. The model transforms diffuse contextual information into interpretable patterns and fosters awareness of the sociocultural conditions shaping perception and design. In positioning design as a form of visual anthropology, the CCM frames the ordinary as a site of insight – rendering the familiar visible, meaningful and creatively generative, while supporting an accessible and distributed approach to visual-cultural understanding.