The influence of Islamic Culture on Service Design

Abstract

As a result of the swift development of global civilization, a kind of mixed culture started to materialize the whole world. And regarding that culture represent the main source of thinking for any society, therefore any effect or mix with another culture will reflect on the way society thinks or behave toward any subject. Therefore, the materialization of global thoughts will produce new sophisticated products, services, and systems. And that what divided the world into two categories, the first owns and produces the new civilization, sovereignty, inventions representing the only source of know-how and innovation, dominating the rest of the world. And the second is just receiving, using, and consuming what the first category produced. Middle East countries are mostly classified as the second category, however, it has many rich cultures such as the Islamic culture. And here is the problem, which affects the usage culture of a society in which a specific imbalance may occur, sometimes in contradiction with the local traditions and ethical manners, or even neglect some advantage and sophistication in the current culture. Despite the dominance of one thought over the world, and marginalization of other ideas and concepts occurs through this, the convergence of ideas and cultures and the mixing among them, which affects the impact of local cultures. That when culture gets transferred into different societies, it gets transmitted with its characteristics ideas, customs, and traditions, which may not appropriate for the hosting society in different ways. For this reason, as a design approach to keep the cultural identity and revive the high values in the Islamic Culture with all included traditions, ideas, and beliefs, the researchers in this paper try to investigate the influence of the Islamic Culture on designing new sophisticated products providing public services. Focusing on public water dispenser as an example of how ancient Islamic designs provided such crucial service achieving high standards of humanity and usability. Then explore through discussion and trials on how to use the same principles and beliefs to design new public water dispensers.