Worldview

Based on their prior experiences, people regard the “tone” of the world differently. For example, a person who grew up in poverty as a child could develop a worldview that the world is unfair, cruel, and without hope. The person’s experiences would develop this worldview—experiences like moving from place to place, living in cars, hiding from thieves, and not knowing where or if their next meal would happen.

Worldview is phenomenological, based on how a person perceives reality. A person could as easily regard the world as “against them” in a Murphy’s Law kind-of-way as much as they could believe that the world is inherently kind and that “good things happen to good people.”

Knowing a person’s worldview (more captured explicitly by the German word weltanschauung), can help designers understand what content would be inappropriate in a design. In the case of a person whose worldview was framed by hardship and marginalization, design objects styled to feel comfortable, stable, and trustworthy could instill trust in a product, service, or system.

Todd Weir gives an insightful overview of the history of worldview.