Industrial designers see a new future for Taiwan

In the past, Taiwan focused on OEM (original equipment manufacturing), or custom-made products for others, and now it is moving to ODM (original design manufacturing), where it designs some features for its customers. What is the value of industrial design (ID) and what is its importance for Taiwan's future?

Paul Lo (駱捷中), Lite-On Technology (光寶科技): As the three markets of communication, consumer electronics and computers [3C] converge into one, it becomes very important for consumer products to have good ID. Colors and designs will be critical for products to be accepted by families in their homes.

Christoph Boeninger, DesignAfairs GmbH: Innovation in itself can be positive or negative. Cellphones today have the same computing power as notebooks did a few years ago. We have not just to think about technological innovation, but also service innovation. What kind of services do we have to offer to really drive innovation and really get a larger, broader acceptance of the innovations?

Lin Rong-tai (林榮泰), Chang Gung Institute of Technology (長庚技術學院): The ultimate goal is to add cultural value so that we can have our own branding and add our own value to products. I personally think we should keep our OEM cost-down advantages, then go into design and increase the value of our products before moving to OBM [own brand manufacturing]. ID, from the academic point of view, should be from the emotions. The designer should be the interpreter of science, mediating science to a more human form.

How do you find the balance between practicality and design?

David Chen (陳世哲), Era Technology (世訊科技): Realization is the key. We need to understand the positioning in the market, who the user is and how they are going to use the product.

We need to keep learning new things, new design trends in the industry. I graduated 10 years ago and what I studied then is very different from what is needed now. With the design team, we create a concept. By using 3D modeling and verification, the innovations converge into the best proposal. The join between the front-end understanding to the back-end realization is very important, and what we need to capture and control is user-centered -- that is the most important.

Lo: Our customers represent the consumers at large as we are an ODM company and do not face end-users directly. We have to think about cost. This cannot be achieved by a single person -- it must be done by the whole team.

Boeninger: Design is very important. Look at luxury cars like Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, etc. The head of design is always part of the executive board. There is a chief executive officer and a chief financial officer, but also a chief design officer, or CDO. That shows how important design is for the success of the company and the product. If you ask a customer in Europe why they buy a cellphone, 80 percent will say they like the design. Siemens sell US$10 billion in phones per year.

Eighty percent of that is US$8 billion. If US$8 billion is directly linked to good design or bad design, then you see how much responsibility the designers have.

One brand -- Ericsson -- fell out of the race due to bad design. There was a Financial Times article about one year ago that read "Ericsson lost US$1.5 billion due to bad design."

What are the major differences between design in Taiwan, and design in other parts of Asia, the US and Europe?