SK Telecom/Broadband introduced a setup box called B Box. It was co-developed by a design consulting agency, Plus-ex, and recently received a red-dot design award. It not only looks way different from other ugly, bulky setup boxes, but it also provides several interesting services with TV viewers through immensely improved User Interface (UI). For instance, viewers can access the information about weather, stock prices, and his/her own schedule information watching the program. They can customize the layout and choose main screen size as well as select which information they want to get among traffic, home monitoring, pictures, and etc.
For me, I like the Dynamic Channel function. It allows me to “watch” up to 12 running TV programs on different channels. I review multiple contents, skip commercials, and choose the best channel. I wish other companies pay attention to improving viewers’ TV experiences as well.
Although integrating design and marketing is critical for successful new product development (NPD), there has been a limited attention to the potential problems that arise during the NPD process and their possible solutions in academic literature. In order to narrow this gap, our study conducted a series of surveys of an interdisciplinary class project between marketing and design students over two year periods and identified two major potential problems: (1) conflict from the functional background, and (2) the conflict from imbalanced decision-making authority between design and marketing. In order to resolve such conflict, we found the two contrasting solutions: (1) facilitating communication to enhance cross-functional integration between the two groups and (2) prohibiting communication to protect each group. Our findings contribute to the formation of a theoretical basis for research on the topic of design-marketing integration.
