Blow-ups win design prize

With product design a top consumer consideration when purchasing electronics, pundits yesterday said that domestic competitiveness in the world's markets hinges on the ability to innovate.

"Among all commercial designs, the concept of user-friendliness will be the major challenge for local designers to perfect their innovations," said David Lin (林行憲), chief executive officer of computer parts maker the Lite-On Group (光寶集團), yesterday at a ceremony to honor winners of its second annual innovation awards.

The event, co-organized by Lite-On and the China External Trade Development Council (CETRA, 貿協), yesterday recognized 20 innovative designs by college students from a crowd of over 500 entries. The theme for this year was "the seventh sense -- human communications in the digital era."

The gold prize at yesterday's awards was given to Tessa Yen (顏韻如), a sophomore at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, who designed a human-shaped mobile-phone accessory that automatically inflates in a user's pocket to notify them of an incoming call or message.

"How to add a bit of fun to the design was the hardest part for me," Yen said, spelling out the challenges innovative designers face.

Yen said she will be overjoyed if her design could turn into a real product although she believed that some practical modifications need to be done to make the new product more user-friendly.

The Lite-On CEO expressed satisfaction with the students' work yesterday.

"After minor modifications on practicability and studies of economic scale, four to six of these 20 winning designs may stand a good chance of becoming real products," Lin said, adding that the awards aim to encourage innovative designs and further enhance Taiwan's information-technology competitiveness and style.

Stressing the importance of innovation to add value to electronic products, Lin yesterday said that Lite-On has approximately 2,000 in-house designers to help create added value for its products. He also hoped that the government will help upgrade enterprises' innovative capabilities by encouraing more international groups to hold their exhibitions in Taiwan.

Upholding the government's determination to nurture R&D talent, CETRA's secretary general Huang Chih-peng (黃志鵬) echoed Lin's view, saying "Taiwan should begin creating its own brand name products, upgrading from a fabrication center to a research-and-design center to secure its world economic importance."