DESIGN NEWS 261

('03.3.10)

Creative Society and Design

Next strategy of MUJI

Great Expectations
New British Design Stories

Visit to IDEO

Design of “SPOT”

World Design Awards 2002-2003

When economies change, work and professions change. Industrial designers are the children of the industrial revolution. Industrialization allowed firms reaching new levels of productivity by exploiting machines. Industrial designers adapted products to consumer tastes so that mass production became even more profitable. The times of profitability based on mass production are over. A new revolution is transforming the economy and society. The coming “Creative Society” focuses on the most innovative ideas and demands a new kind of design. This new world of competition between ideas is already becoming reality as China is fast becoming the factory of the world. Consequently, industrial designers who do not speak Chinese and do not move to work in China are in great danger to loose the reason of their existence. Designers in industrialized countries need to transform themselves. For the “Creative Society” they need to stop merely attempting to impart greater attractiveness to superfluous mass products that were created in the first place solely for the purpose of exhausting factory capacity. Designers must create the ideas needed by society, they must develop factories, organize distribution and add entrepreneurial value to lead the “Creative Society.”
In this report, Dr. Patrick Reinmoeller discusses the nature of the coming “Creative Society” in which creative activities and competition will come to control every aspect of social activity and he considers the roles that designers will have to play in this context.

Patrick Reinmoeller, Associate Professor, Erasmus Univ., Rotterdam School of Management

Planning for the 2003 spring and summer season is going to see the launch by Mujirushi Ryohin of “World MUJI,” a new series of products in the Mujirushi Ryohin range based on ideas from designers all over the world. The idea is to look for products based on the concepts of “necessity” and “ordinariness” that are associated with Mujirushi Ryohin from all over the world and get designers from outside Japan who are in sympathy with the approach that characterizes this brand to come up with new ideas for products. Enzo Mari, Sam Hecht, Shin & Tomoko Azumi and Jasper Morrison are among the designers who have taken part in designing the first releases in the “World MUJI” range, which comprise furniture and tableware.
Design News interviewed Takashi Yajima (General Manager of the Household Division, Merchandising Headquarters, Ryohin Keikaku), who is responsible for promoting this project, about its aims and strategy.

Jun Akimoto, Editor, Design News

An exhibition entitled “Great Expectations” was held between December 10 and 15 last year at the Tokyo International Forum in Tokyo's Yurakucho district. The aim of this exhibition was to stimulate awareness of contemporary British design and its originality. This is a touring exhibition being taken to various locations around the world. It is intended to blow away the fusty, traditional image of Britain and to focus on creative and innovative design. It was planned by the British Design Council in order to encourage cultural and business relations between the United Kingdom and Japan.
The title of the exhibition, “Great Expectations,” was of course taken from the novel by Charles Dickens. Due to the great importance of dialogue between nations, products designed by British designers were displayed on an enormous dining table, the aim being to encourage dialogue between visitors to the exhibition and the products and between the designers and companies.
This article features an interview with Andrew Summers, Chief Executive of the Design Council, who visited Japan to attend the exhibition in Tokyo, concerning the aims of the exhibition and the prospects for international exchange in the field of design in the future.

Yuichi Yamada, Editor in Chief, Design News

IDEO is a design firm based in Palo Alto in the United States. Its main feature is its use of “collaborative design.”
IDEO is not the sort of firm in which there is a single famous designer with several staff members working beneath him. Design is carried out on a group basis. The group in this case consists of specialists in various fields including designers, engineers and psychologists. Small teams are put together under the name of “hot teams.” These teams engage in intensive brainstorming sessions while constantly improving the prototypes on which they are working, thus tackling and mastering one project after another.
What is the secret of the collaboration that occurs so naturally within IDEO? Last November, Seita Koike visited the IDEO's office in Palo Alto and interviewed several leading staff members including Tom Kelley and Bill Moggridge. In this report he discusses IDEO's innovative design processes and the firm's highly original in-house design environment.

Seita Koike, Associate Professor, Musashi Institute of Technology

“SPOT” is a wheeled stick held in front of the user. It's equipped with artificial eyes and intelligence and might be thought of as a kind of robotic guide dog.
SPOT doesn't actually escort the user anywhere; it's intended rather as a passive fellow-traveler that makes it easier for people with impaired vision to get around complex urban environments. SPOT can, however, also take the initiative in providing the user with information about specific circumstances.
Marcus Heneen, a young designer at Ergonomidesign, designed the guide dog robot SPOT as a study project during his last year at design college. The aim of this project was to show what design and technology can do to improve the daily lives of people with impaired vision.
In this report, Marcus Heneen, SPOT's designer, discusses the design of his invention, which is attracting considerable interest for its pioneering qualities. Yuichi Yamada, editor in chief of Design News, also takes a look at the design approach focusing on the user products by Heneen's company, Ergonomidesign.

Marcus Heneen, designer, Ergonomidesign AB and Yuichi Yamada, Editor in Chief, Design News

The World Design Awards are planned every year on the basis of worldwide surveys conducted independently by Design News.
This is the thirteen occasions on which this event has been held. Fourteen Good Design Awards were presented to submissions from twelve countries.
In this special feature we take a look at the main prize-winning works that won the 14 design prizes and introduce some of this year's topics.

Edited by Design News