Category Archives: Cases

Cases

Different Ads, different people, same products

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20130421_@ Museum (10)

I visited a special exhibition at the Seoul Museum of History and met an old day of Korean advertisement.

“Title: Seoul Nostalgia: A Retrospective Photographic Exhibition of Kim Hanyong

Having started as a news photographer in 1947 at ‘Gukje Bodo’ (International Report), Kim Han-yong is a renowned photographer who has devoted himself solely to photography throughout his life. His professional traces crossing genres such as news, art and advertisement can be translated into the records of Korea’s contemporary history. This exhibition consists broadly of the two themes: ‘Memories of City’ and ‘Portraits of the beauty’. ‘Memories of City’ displays the dynamic changes that Seoul and the people living in it have gone through since the 1950’s. ‘Portraits of the beauty’ presents some 70 advertising posters created by Kim, commonly referred to as an ‘advertising photography magnate’. He says that he has never forgotten photography for a moment in his life of 90 years. Thanks to this passionate artist, we can discover our own portraits of the days when we dreamed with hope despite difficult circumstances.”

20130421_@ Museum (5)

I had an interesting observation when I compared between the Coca-cola ad and Hyundai-Ford ad in the 1970s. About 40 years ago, Coca-cola was advertised WITH pencil-drawing consumers while the Hyundai-Ford car was advertised WITHOUT drivers. Since then, this trend has become opposite: Coca-cola is now showing Coke (or bear)  whereas Hyundai is now demonstrating how people drive vehicles.

Cases

How do we evaluate designs?

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20130415_Design @ Kmu ID (1)

My friend teaches Product Design. He uses coffee maker in his course. Students disassemble and assemble a coffee maker and then design a new one.

A few days ago, I was invited to see the designs that his students submitted to his course. After discussing with him which ones are well designed and why, I made two interesting observations.

20130415_Design @ Kmu ID (3)

First, only few coffee maker designs have cords. He and I reached a consensus that most students failed to take into account how their newly designed coffee makers work or look like in reality. Only few thought these issues deeply and put some flavor of reality. Interestingly, we reached another consensus that the coffee makers with the cords are generally better designed than those without cords.

20130415_Design @ Kmu ID (5)

Next, we chose the identical coffee maker as well designed for different reasons. I chose it because its look and feel is appealing whereas he chose it because it may work well compared to others. Although I always assume that aesthetics and usefulness are in a trade-off situation, they are not necessarily traded off in the reality.

Cases

Timid-looking electric vehicle

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20130330_@ Seoul Motor Show (22)

At the Seoul Motor Show, I met a vehicle operated by electricity. It attracts attention not because of its strong performance but because of its soft name and weak design. It is called Yebbujana, meaning “Beautiful, isn’t it?”. Further, it has a curvy body with four extremely small headlamps. In general, having an inviting name and approachable design is a good approach. Managers and designers might want to launch their rapidly new product in an unassertive way. However, this car sounds and looks too timid to drive.

“Timid, isn’t it?”

Cases

How to collect creative ideas massively?

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20130327_Soren @ KMU (1)

Soren Petersen gave a presentation on how to collect creative ideas in a massive scale. He introduced how he applied crowdsourcing methods to address a wide variety of design issues including design marketing conflicts, animal rescue, peace innovation, to name a few. According to him, social platforms such as LinkedIn and HuffingtonPost are useful for us to prioritize problems, solicit solutions and share key insights with professional designers.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/E0eQNGc_TAw]

Cases

What happens when the men’s room sign is pink?

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20130315_Washroom @ Ewha Women University (2)

Blue is for boys and pink is for girls. This color-gender association is strongly established in many countries. In a women’s university in Korea, however, signs for men’s rooms and for ladies’ rooms are both colored in pink. My friend said that they use the same color to avoid any possible gender discrimination. Interestingly however, pink signs confuse men when searching for men’s room. Indeed, “men” needs to be written down on the door of men’s room.

20130315_Washroom @ Ewha Women University (3)

This raises a series of interesting questions.

  • First, does the different colors discriminate different genders?
  • Second, if this is the case, should we sacrifice our color-based convenience in order to promote social justice?
  • Third, if color-based convenience needs to be replaced with other coding systems, what are the other ways that do not discriminate gender? For instance, if the shape-gender association is a good candidate (below), how could we UN-learn the color-gender association and then learn the shape-gender association?
20130315_Washroom @ Ewha Women University (1)

Reference

Scarpina, F., & Tagini, S. (2017). The stroop color and word test. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 557.

The literature on interference in the Stroop Color and Word Test, covering over 50 yrs and some 400 studies, is organized and reviewed. In so doing, a set of 18 reliable empirical findings is isolated that must be captured by any successful theory of the Stroop effect. Existing theoretical positions are summarized and evaluated in view of this critical evidence and the 2 major candidate theories, relative speed of processing and automaticity of reading, are found to be wanting. It is concluded that recent theories placing the explanatory weight on parallel processing of the irrelevant and the relevant dimensions are likely to be more successful than are earlier theories attempting to locate a single bottleneck in attention.

Cases

Hyundai Motors, UX for car marketing

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Hyundai i30

Hyundai released i30 in Europe. So far, most of its marketing messages focus on how it looks (design) and what special features it has (convenience). However, I came up with a different thought after watching a youtube video that one of my German friends recommended me to watch. In the video, Martin Winterkorn, the Chairman of the Volkswagen AG, studied the Hyundai i30 personally at the Motorshow in Frankfurt IAA 2011.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpPNVSQmR5c]

Between 1:30 and 2:00 minutes, he tilted up and down i30’s steering wheel and then said,

“There is no noise. BMW can’t do it. We can’t do it”

I am surprised to find that the car made by Hundai makes no noise while those cars made by BMWs or VWs may make some noises when the steering wheel is tilted. Interestingly, some BMW drivers already posted this issue on a website to look for a solution (e.g., Creaking noise when tilting steering wheel). Now, Hyundai marketers can go beyond traditional issues such as look & feel, convenience, or gas mileage to raise a new issue (e.g., noise of tilting steering wheel or, more broadly speaking, user experience) and differentiate their cars from their competitors.

Cases

What is the right choice for museum curators?

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DML_Boston

While I stayed in Boston for the conference, I visited Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston and met an intriguing decision-making question. I took a picture of a panel titled Making Choices which says,

Every gallery represents a long series of choices. Who decides which works go on view and how they should be arranged? What factors go into making that decision? Does the Museum have consistent guidelines about what should be on view — or do the rules change from gallery to gallery?

Ultimately, the MFA’s curators are responsible for deciding what you see in the galleries, for making choices from the Museum’s rich collections that do justice to the art and engage the viewer. Context is key — what is the story to be told? Should the gallery be a survey of a whole period or should it showcase just a few artists in depth? Should it provide variety or set up close comparisons? Re-create a sense of a historical period, focus on a specific style, or feature that character of individual objects? Curators work with a team of designers and educators in considering these issues and making these decisions.

And finally there is the question of quality. Which works are the most compelling? In which are the artist’s skills most effectively employed? Where are materials used with the greatest sophistication or technical ability? And what about condition: does the work still represent the artist’s intent at the time it was made?

Indeed, curators face a decision-making task regarding how to display an artifact. Do they complete the artifact to restore its original appearance (e.g., sofa with hypothetical cushions) or do they remain the artifact as-is for further studies (e.g., sofa frame only)? Unfortunately, there is no right answer for this question. I wish some behavioral decision theory researchers discuss this issue seriously.

***

Reference

Einhorn, H. J., & Hogarth, R. M. (1981). Behavioral decision theory: Processes of judgement and choice. Annual review of psychology, 32(1), 53-88.

Cases

Research questions about design

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Research topics @ DMI_20120808 001
Research topics @ DMI_20120808 001

Research topics @ DMI_20120808 002
Research topics @ DMI_20120808 002

Research topics @ DMI_20120808 003
Research topics @ DMI_20120808 003

At the 2012 International Design Management Research Conference  (August 8-9, 2012 @ Boston), I have attended a group discussion session called Research Methodology Clinic. Its description says,

Join us for a group conversation, facilitated by Alison Rieple and Jeanne Liedtka, in which interested colleagues come together to offer feedback and coaching to each other on the thorny issues we face as academic researchers in design related areas. Come with a research issue you’ve been struggling with and/or to offer your successful methodological insights to others!

In this session, 12 participants have shared not only their research methodologies but also their research topics. From the pictures above, you will be able to identify who was studying which topic. The research topics vary from DESIGN (Understanding how design really happens), DESIGN THINKING (Definition, construct, and application / Its relationship with management), and DESIGNERS (Collaborative problem solving / Decision-making) to DESIGN POLICY (Corporate level of design polity), INNOVATION (Metrics to identify innovators), DESIGN PROCESS (toolkit, activities, and actions) and SERVICE DESIGN.

Cases

Money for designers

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Coroflot designer salary guide
Coroflot designer salary guide

How much money do designers (and creative professionals) make? According to the Coroflot Design Salaray Guide, design managers and interaction designers make more money than architects and graphic designers, in particular, in North American cities and other international cities. One way to make more money is, I believe, to put some academic flavor. Here is a comment I have met recently in the PhD design mailing list.

“Teaching by showing is normal; teaching by explaining the way of thinking is the next step forward. An excellent designer with superimposed doctoral training can be a real treasure. It is a pity that so many good designers do not actualize themselves to their full potential both as designers and as professors just because they hate that bookish staff. It is high time that design academia rethink their way of creating new professors.”