The Design Ladder's four tiersThere's no doubt that Taiwan's business community now recognizes the importance of design; Asustek and Kiddie's Paradise are models of how design is done at large high-tech firms and SMEs, respectively.
The Taiwan Design Center's September 2005 survey of more than 1,000 companies on their use of design revealed that 66% felt that design was extremely important to their company's operations and that 78% had made use of designers. Major uses included the creation of product brochures, illustrations, websites, instruction manuals, and packaging, as well as the look and structure of products.
The results of this survey may seem positive, but according to Liou Wei-gong, an assistant professor of sociology at Soochow University who studies consumer behavior, viewed from the perspective of the Design Ladder proposed by the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation, Taiwanese businesses have only a rudimentary understanding of design's capabilities.
The Design Ladder describes businesses' use of design in terms of four tiers. The first tier, "non design," describes those for whom design is of no importance. The second, "design as styling," relates design to the physical form of a product. The third, "design as process," is for businesses that include design in the product development process. Asustek and BenQ are companies of this type. The fourth and highest tier, "design as innovation," describes companies that incorporate design into their operating strategy and corporate culture.
Nearly all Taiwanese businesses recognize that design is important, but how should they integrate it into their operations? How do they go about placing design at the heart of their corporate culture, rather than simply treating it as something peripheral or as a means of adding value?
"The first thing is to raise the standing of the directors of design departments," says TDC's Chang, who notes that the head of the Samsung group's design department also sits on the board of directors. With a design expert on the board, policy naturally takes design considerations into account.
In Taiwan, BenQ has located the offices of its Lifestyle Design Center on the 13th floor of its Neihu office building, just below those of company chairman Lee Kun-yao. The center reports directly to the president and chairman. BenQ also promoted Manfred Wang from design supervisor to chief design officer (CDO) in 2006, becoming the first company in the Greater China region to establish such a position.
BenQ has also been raising staffing levels in the department, growing it from just seven employees to 80 in five years. Even so, it remains small in comparison to the design departments of South Korea's electronics giants--Samsung employs over 500 people in its design department, while LG's employs some 400.
Sony, which has the 22nd most valuable brand in the world, is an archetypical design-led corporation. Liou Wei-gong's research has identified three characteristics of Sony's design organization: First, the company's designers have higher status relative to its engineers and play more roles than at other companies. Second, Sony's designers have more opportunities to move into senior management positions. Third, Sony's designers focus on cultural trends and its target customers' cultural habits, with the result that its products show a cultural dimension unrelated to technological limitations.
Design, brand, lifestyleDesign is the mechanism by which Taiwanese businesses are transitioning from a manufacturing-driven business model to a brand-driven model. But local companies are still unclear on how to use design to build their brands' value.
According to Liou, who spent part of last year interviewing designers in Scandinavia, 27% of companies in Sweden make no use of designers; 12% believe that "design" refers to the physical form of products; 39% incorporate design into their development processes; and 22% have designers working side-by-side with management.
"Trends in the cellphone handset market show that it is never the addition of features or technology that spurs consumers to buy; it's their 'feel,'" says Liou. "For example, Motorola emphasizes lightweight phones, whereas LG focuses on flip phone designs and colors. Nokia's CEO has gone even further, claiming that Nokia isn't an electronics company, but an 'experience company,' and that its competitors aren't other cellphone manufacturers, but rather companies that offer joy or sweet confections, i.e. candy makers, the entertainment industry, and the service industries."
In the case of the Swedish Singelringen that swept the world a few years ago, the inspiration was an ordinary, everyday occurrence:
A young Swedish man met a young woman at a dinner party and they really hit it off. During the course of their conversation, both noted it was really difficult in this day and age to figure out who was single and who wasn't, and agreed that asking directly was extremely awkward. A thought then arose: Married persons wear a ring that announces their status to the world. Why couldn't singles have their own ring? Tens of millions of these uniquely numbered, turquoise acrylic-and-silver rings have now sold around the world. The Singelringen has done so fantastically well because it isn't simply a ring--it is also a sharp response to a social need and suggests a mature and confident stance towards life.
Liou argues that design, branding and lifestyle are all linked, but believes that the connection between design and branding is an indirect one. This connection passes through and is transformed by lifestyle, creating a circular relationship between the three. The connection between product design and lifestyle, meanwhile, is quite intimate and built upon aesthetics. Design increases the aesthetic appeal of a brand, creating a unique and powerful aesthetic image that etches itself into consumers' minds.
Nurturing aesthetic senseBut is Taiwanese soil fertile enough to grow a "lifestyle society"? Do we understand the market for aesthetic consumption well enough?
Lee Jen-fang, director of National Chengchi University's Graduate Institute of Technology and Information Management, has written that business, government and academia used to believe that if Taiwan wanted to escape the curse of low margins it had to transform its economy as rapidly as possible from one that was manufacturing driven to one that was knowledge based. When we later learned that many so-called "knowledge industries" also struggled with low margins, a new prescription was developed. This one called for grafting a design-intensive "economy of aesthetics" onto the structure of the knowledge economy.
Lee went on to ask why, given the slew of major international design awards Taiwan has won in recent years, so few Taiwanese products were catching fire around the world. Were they missing some crucial element necessary to spark consumers' interest?
Asustek general manager Eric Chang argues that design enhances a brand's image, but acknowledges that its effects on business aren't immediately quantifiable. He believes that design has played an important part in the rapid growth of his company's profits.
BenQ's Manfred Wang, meanwhile, argues that sales of award-winning products depend on a number of factors, including price, consistency of quality, and marketing. As a result, even well-reviewed products sometimes fail to sell well.
Perhaps we've been too eager to commercialize "designed products."
"Creativity only flowers where the soil of life is rich," says Lee. Taiwanese society is one in which people work and live at a frenetic pace. Life moves so fast that lifestyles suffer. If Taiwanese don't first develop a pervasive interest in style and aesthetics, the much-talked-about economy of aesthetics will become nothing more than so much hot air.
"In Taiwan, businesspeople tend to think all you need to do to create a brand is unveil a bunch of products and market them heavily," says Lee. "But brand and name-recognition aren't the same thing. A product's notoriety doesn't necessarily translate into sales to consumers." He argues that in an age of overproduction, we can't continue to view branding from the perspective of production. We need to change directions, moving towards consumer-driven notions of branding. We need to think about creating lifestyles when we consider the branding models of this new era.
"As with Taiwan's many international innovation awards and patents, the design awards are an affirmation of our design capabilities," says Liou. "But we have yet to bridge the gap between design and the consumer market. Our long-term objective is to find ways to transform strategic design and creative capital into products. We need to acquire a finer, more precise understanding of consumers' tastes and aesthetic trends."
Innovation and design aren't mathematical equations that you can solve with precision; they grow out of our imaginations and aesthetics. Taiwan should use the manufacturing technology it already possesses as a foundation on which to build up its design capabilities. It's going to take all of us to ensure that local design truly takes flight.
International awards for Taiwanese design
Award name |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
---|
Germany iF Award |
7 |
5 |
14 |
37 |
72 |
38 |
Germany Red dot Award |
0 |
0 |
2 |
20 |
35 |
33 |
Japan G-Mark Good Design Award |
7 |
11 |
36 |
38 |
38 |
- |
USA Industrial Design Excellence Award |
- |
- |
1 |
5 |
1 |
- |
Total |
14 |
16 |
53 |
100 |
146 |
- |
note: The German awards are divided into categories such as product design and visual design. The figures shown are totals. source: Taiwan Design Center |