Abstract
Gifts are more than things; they represent and tie together human relationships. While people often treat it as a token of social interactions, the presentation of a gift could impose an identity that reflects gift-givers’ images of gift-receivers. Because gift-giving is a social behaviour situated in the cultural and economic context, the perceived value of gifts is greatly affected by the social norms and the consumer market, in which design plays an important role. In this paper, we first discuss how commodities can be transformed into gifts and what kinds of design activities influence such transformations. We found that most relevant designs for commercial gifts are giver-centred with less regard to the concern of gift-receivers. Second, we consider people to be designers themselves, so that each step of the gift-giving could be intentionally framed, influencing the consequences of giving a gift. To this regard, we want to help people identify what affects their perceived differences between thinking of a gift as a token of gratitude or an imposition of identity. We conducted a small design research by designing a gift-giving social game, which situated participants in an imaginary gift-giving environment to understand others' gift preferences. Additionally, the game also helps designers to observe participants’ natural reflections on the past experiences and capture their interpretations of gifts and gift-giving based on different human relationships. By presenting preliminary findings from the game playtests, we hope to inform future design activities, either at an individual-level or collective-level, to facilitate positive consequences of gift-giving.
Keywords
Gift, Gift-giving, Design Game, Design Research
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.329
Citation
Liu, H.,and Kim, M.(2023) Is gift a token of gratitude or an imposition of identity? Facilitating positive consequences of gift-giving with receiver-centred design, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.329
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
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Included in
Is gift a token of gratitude or an imposition of identity? Facilitating positive consequences of gift-giving with receiver-centred design
Gifts are more than things; they represent and tie together human relationships. While people often treat it as a token of social interactions, the presentation of a gift could impose an identity that reflects gift-givers’ images of gift-receivers. Because gift-giving is a social behaviour situated in the cultural and economic context, the perceived value of gifts is greatly affected by the social norms and the consumer market, in which design plays an important role. In this paper, we first discuss how commodities can be transformed into gifts and what kinds of design activities influence such transformations. We found that most relevant designs for commercial gifts are giver-centred with less regard to the concern of gift-receivers. Second, we consider people to be designers themselves, so that each step of the gift-giving could be intentionally framed, influencing the consequences of giving a gift. To this regard, we want to help people identify what affects their perceived differences between thinking of a gift as a token of gratitude or an imposition of identity. We conducted a small design research by designing a gift-giving social game, which situated participants in an imaginary gift-giving environment to understand others' gift preferences. Additionally, the game also helps designers to observe participants’ natural reflections on the past experiences and capture their interpretations of gifts and gift-giving based on different human relationships. By presenting preliminary findings from the game playtests, we hope to inform future design activities, either at an individual-level or collective-level, to facilitate positive consequences of gift-giving.