Towards a Culturally Responsive Automotive Design Curriculum: A Conceptual Framework Integrating Lifestyle, Aesthetics, and Malaysian Cultural Identity

Abstract

Design education in Malaysia's higher education institutions faces a significant curricular gap: automotive and industrial design programmes largely draw on Western aesthetic frameworks that inadequately account for Malaysian cultural values, social identity, and Islamic aesthetic sensibility. This conceptual paper addresses this gap by proposing the Lifestyle–Aesthetic–Design (LAD) Framework, an integrated curriculum model that positions automotive aesthetics as culturally situated knowledge relevant to design teaching. Drawing on aesthetic preference theory (Berlyne, 1971; Hekkert et al., 2003), consumer behaviour models (Ajzen, 1991; Maslow, 1943), and Symbolic Interactionism (Blumer, 1969), the framework proposes three core constructs, Lifestyle Orientation, Aesthetic Dimensions, and Design Response, mediated by Malaysian-specific cultural variables including collective social identity, Islamic aesthetic sensibility, and modernisation aspiration. The paper identifies three curricular implications for automotive design programmes: integration of culturally situated aesthetic theory, embedding of consumer behaviour and cultural psychology, and repositioning of sustainability as an aesthetic challenge. The LAD Framework provides design educators with a theoretically grounded, empirically testable model for curriculum development in the Malaysian higher education context.