Cultural Awareness Toolkit
I researched cross-cultural teamwork and designed a card game workshop that helps teams talk about working styles before misunderstandings become collaboration problems.
Culture shapes how people ask for help, handle uncertainty, respond to hierarchy, and work with others. Most teams only notice it after tension appears.
A card game that gives teams a safe way to talk
The toolkit uses concrete scenarios instead of abstract culture questions. Everyone responds to the same work situation, then reflection cards help the team understand how culture, personality, and past experience shape different working styles.
Scenario
A work situation that reveals how people handle ambiguity, hierarchy, or help-seeking.
Reflection
A prompt that helps participants explain the why behind different responses.
Takeaway
A closing card that turns awareness into something the team can carry forward.
Icebreaker
Cultural background
Scenario response
Reflection
Takeaway
Open questions, shared vocabulary, expectation management, and trust before collaboration starts.
Research, design, and two rounds of evaluation
I interviewed 14 designers on cross-cultural teams. The key finding: people often experienced cultural friction, but did not have a safe or structured way to talk about it before collaboration started.
I designed a 1-2 hour card game workshop. Instead of asking people to describe their culture in the abstract, scenario cards asked how they would respond to real work situations.
I tested the prototype with four university students, then evaluated the final version with four LEGO employees. The toolkit created open, non-judgmental dialogue that participants said felt different from normal onboarding or team-building.
What the toolkit made possible
The scenario cards helped people reveal working-style differences through concrete situations, not abstract culture labels.
The reflection cards helped teams understand why people responded differently and how to work with those differences.
The game format made sensitive conversations feel safer, more curious, and less like a formal assessment.
“The toolkit and questions are very focused on no-judgment communication style, which made it very easy to open up and share experiences and mindset.”LEGO participant, final evaluation