A POSSIBILITY OF OVERCOMING DEATH VALLEY BY UTILIZING INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS

Abstract

This study aims at answering two questions by focusing on three cases of Japanese electronics companies which succeeded in connecting the new technologies with business by utilizing industrial designers. The first question is how the industrial designers contribute to change new technologies into products and the second is why they can do it. As for the former we found the industrial designers acted as concept creator in the advanced development. In all of the three companies before the decision was made about how to apply the new technology, the industrial designers contacted and suggested to the researchers and engineers about the possible ways of using it. As for the latter question, three factors were found to be supportive to the designer's functions. Firstly, inherent skills of industrial designers like sketching, and making clay models allow them to behave as concept creator. Secondly, their job character and position in the organization also help them to serve as concept creator. For example, different from marketers and sales persons, industrial designers don't need to care the quota of sales. Also, not like the engineers, their thinking are not confined to technology itself but more freely extended to its potential ways of application. Finally, appropriate organizational systems are needed to allow the industrial designers to function as concept creator. This may be the most important element in that no matter how the designer is skillful and taking a special position, he can't perform efficiently without adequate system building. Three varieties of necessary systems are pointed out in this paper, i. e. system for information collection, system for motivating industrial designers and systems for making prototypes rapidly.