The Role of Design
In almost every project at KCmitF, I work with a designer in some way. Quite often, I interact with both Japanese and foreign designers. Similar to craftsmen, I realized each designer has his or her own personality and way of thinking.
In this article, I would like to focus on how I feel about design, especially product design, which is something that I have lots of experience with after spending time with designers and people in the manufacturing field.
There were many times that I thought to myself, “Designers are awesome!” This is because in the process of making things, they are able to offer solutions to things that should be done differently, but that I don’t know how to do. Also, when the manufacturing process hits a wall, the designer can sometimes encourage the craftsman by gesturing with his hands and saying, “Let’s do this!” I think this is the power of a designer, to be able to take what is in our minds conceptually and give it shape.
Let me talk about my past for a bit. Before starting KCmitF, I was a buyer and merchandiser, in charge of thinking about which products to curate and how to sell them. The kind of products I was in charge of and the specific retail stores differed throughout my career, but basically, everyday I thought about how and what I can do to make things sell. It was also a world where you could immediately see the results of your work, seeing products sell after putting them on the store shelves.
Since you are always facing the customer, you will know fairly quickly what products will sell and what you need to do to sell more. To go deeper, you can see how sales are affected depending on the particular marketing and sales promotion strategies used. From there, the last step to transform people into buying customers would be the visual merchandising and customer service.
An essential part of purchasing involves negotiating with suppliers. When we look at and talk about various products, we have to think about things like, “I think the customer would be more pleased if x was better,” or “With this function at this price, it might be difficult to beat similar competitors’ products.”
Another common hypothetical I like pose is to imagine what would happen if the product were sold in stores. And then, I’ll make a specific methodological suggestion like, “How about if we do it this way?” and then go as far as proposing a certain strategy. However, in most cases, I would say, “The problem is the part that I told you about earlier, so if we can clear that, we will sell it in the store as our top priority.” Then, I would ask the manufacturers to come up with a solution to the problem itself.
New products come out one after another, and when there are many sales pitches, the job of buyers and merchandisers is mostly to “sort out” the new products that come into view one after another. Even if we can see the problem clearly with a product, it’s difficult to think of a solution because we are mainly responsible for just selecting the finished products. I think that is where creativity is needed.
This is where designers come into play. If you have read this far, you may be wondering, “That’s the job of the designer?” But from my point of view, I think only designers are capable of this creativity. (Of course, there are some very talented craftsmen or buyers who can do it themselves, but I think it is rather rare.) I’m sure that those of you in the manufacturing business who have worked with designers to create successful products will understand this feeling.
On the other hand, there are many times when I feel that what is claimed to be “design” is not really design at all. It is a bit disappointing. In cases where I feel that it doesn’t fulfill its role as design, it is usually because it fails at drawing out the potential of the maker, and answering the needs of the user.
- The world may have never seen this before, but who would use it?
- It is called the “best design,” but we can already see the imperfections.
- The drawings for the product can be made, but how much time and money will it take to actually realize it?
- It’s certainly an interesting design, but is there really any point in having this maker creating it?
Most of the time, when I feel this way, the end result is one of the following: 1) the product goes through prototyping but is not developed into a product, 2) it is completed but does not get any orders, or 3) it does not sell well and is soon put away. It would be a great help if there was a next step after “it doesn’t sell very well”, such as “that’s why we should try this instead!” But if this next step doesn’t exist, one may feel sad and wonder if anyone benefited from this in the end.
Of course, manufacturing is a continuous process of trial and error, filled with experiments and attempts. From there, new techniques and insights emerge along the way so I am not against the process itself. However, I think it’s unfortunate to hear people say, “Even if you get a designer to design something, in the end it won’t result in anything good,” as a result of some misunderstanding, or hearing, “My design is innovative and won a design award”, but in the end, the design was not successful business-wise.
Good initiatives are always born from good synergy – meaning that the producer and the designer communicate smoothly, and that their abilities complement each other well. The result is then more similar to multiplication than addition. There are many craftsmen who have a strong sense of will, and try to meet the expectations of designers, even when the demands are unreasonable. Some of them may even be happy to face these unreasonable challenges. I’m sure it’s the same for designers as well.
I hope that there will be more collaborations where both parties can bring out the best in each other, regardless of whether either one is famous or not. In order to achieve this, I hope that both craftsmen and designers will be able to see themselves objectively, and always be able to determine whether or not they are able to show their abilities and draw out the best in each other.
To help design play its role, KCmitF will continue to work towards bridging the gap between creators and designers.