Nova Design Team Chief Shares Thoughts, Insights on His Profession

Roger Lin, chief designer at Nova Design in Taipei, recently gave an exclusive interview to Taiwan's China Economics News Service (CENS), a leading trade-oriented media covering various markets and the publisher of DIT (Design & Innovation in Taiwan) magazine.

Delivering a savvy combination of globally-sensitive expertise and locally-bred experience, Nova Design Co., Ltd. of Taiwan, the largest and most experienced industrial design studio in the nation as well as one of the most successful in Asia, has been rapidly moving to sharpen its versatile design capability to provide worldwide clients unbeatable competitiveness-superior product designs backed by effective marketing strategies.

This year, Nova Design expects to add at least 15 more prizes from globally renowned design competitions to its trophy cabinet, including awards from iF, reddot, Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA), Excellence in Design (EID) etc., making it a major winner of world-class design contests on the island. Another accolade is that Nova general manager W.L. Chen, the only Chinese invited as an iF juror, will serve for the second-year as an executive board member of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), a global non-profit organization promoting better design worldwide.

Although based in Taiwan, Nova Design has over the past two decades gone global in terms of staff ethnicity and location: the team of around 230 employees hail from 12 nations and are spread across six offices, including Taiwan, Shanghai, Xiamen, Ho Chi Minh City, San Jose (CA, United States), and Sondrio, Italy; while the design studio's range of projects looks just as expansive, including trucks, buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, information and communication technology items, healthcare and medical devices, home appliances, and many more.

Also Nova Design's clientele is equally impressive as the firm has been a major design strategist for big-name brands as Sunbeam, Motorola, Acer, Lucent, Panasonic, AT&T, Giant, Ford, GM, Suzuki, Toyota, SYM, Casio, Siemens etc.

Seasoned Educator and Team Chief

Roger Lin, assistant vice president and chief of Nova's design team and research lab, is the man whose vision guides the studio's steady, sustainable development. A globally famous industrial designer and educator for more than 20 years, Lin has been involved in over 300 projects and specializes in design execution and process, project, management, product strategy development, design resource integration, design team development and management.

Having joined Nova Design in 1990 and worked closely with many international companies such as SYM, Motorola, Lucent etc., Lin, since 2000, has been the design director, a post that has enabled him to lead the team to win many international design awards. Plus Lin is a regular judge at such design competitions.

Design is Rational

Reflecting on industrial design, Lin says: "design should be rational rather than romantic and idealistic. Instead of the stereotypical images of designers being often undisciplined and uninhibited, I firmly believe that industrial or architectural design targets products to make life better and easier, so the purpose of such design is to satisfy 'people' rather than personal emotions and self-indulgence. So, an industrial designer differs essentially from an artist, who expresses personal feelings and thoughts to evoke reactions from maybe nobody or small groups. Industrial designers usually address different issues as function, form and psychology, rather than only the latter as does an artist. In short, an industrial designer should understand how to meet needs via a design process, with the entire process preferably being very rational and without personal emotions."

For example, a design cannot "prefer" A, B, or C but "select" only one of the three choices after having fully recognized the target customer group and marketing strategies. Conversely, Lin adds, the client should be thoroughly sensitive to his market to be able to communicate with the designer. "We fear not having good ideas but a strategy," Lin states.

Recalling a real-world example, Lin says that once Nova suggested considering market acceptance as a premise for creating brand image for a new electric scooter to be designed for handicapped and seniors. Later the client found all three proposed sketches satisfactory. Eventually, according to Lin, the client achieved good market response and, more importantly, learnt more about marketing strategies.

"The integration of strategy and designs is the core expertise of Nova Design," Lin claims. "A good design company should not only develops the styling of a product but also help clients know more about the market, i.e. to be at the same standing point of a client and to be jointly responsible with the client for a project."

Communication is Key

Effective communication between a client and design company is the key to developing a successful project. "Poor communication often foils a project rather than product," Lin says. "In addition, a client's understanding of design or the in-house R&D team's capability also impacts the efficacy of communication. Generally, a weak in-house R&D team tries to learn on-the-job, but its scattered focus and involvement in other projects compromise efficiency of design projects."

Core Competitiveness

"We adopt various approaches for different projects, which enable us to accumulate ample valuable experience and know-how that can lubricate the progress of future projects," Lin says.

Nova Design's core competitiveness and advantages, according to Lin, are its technical specialization, resource integration, and knowledge or strategy. "Nova can take a new PTW from design to mass production in about only a year, which is far faster than the typical 18 to 24 months, as well as build a clay model in two weeks to one month, amazing speed in the field. Because we know the whats and hows of a project. A good design company must have a set of tools to evaluate strategy, positioning and demand."

In recent years, Lin says, the demand for industrial design services in Taiwan has been increasing: OEM and ODM makers, amidst intensifying global competition, have been looking to sharpen their edge by offering products featuring higher degrees of professional design. "Although big international players as Asustek, Acer, BenQ etc. employ in-house designers with considerable skills," Lin says, "but they have to steadily bring onboard new blood-recruiting younger talents-or risk in-house designers becoming complacent, inflexible and staid."

New Design Climate in Taiwan

The best way to further upgrade the local information and communication technology (ICT) companies' design capability is, according to Lin, to cooperate with independent design houses for diversification and cost advantages. However, he adds, there is a paucity of qualified design companies in Taiwan, leading to a suppliers' market where clients are increasingly outsourcing from Europe and the U.S.

Worrying about major in-house design teams recruiting increasingly more talents on the island, Lin says, that reduce the number of medium design studios, or even challenge the survival of small players, whereby such new trends in the local design sector might deter marginalized designers from introducing new techniques, knowledge, and concepts due mainly to cost concerns.

"Taiwan is already a world-class industrial design base, evident from the increasing number of global design awards won by local companies every year," Lin comments. "But the underlying woe is how to cultivate design talents in Taiwan, who are facing unprecedented competition from counterparts in mainland China."

The director divides designers into three groups: those who know how, know why, and know how to dream. According to Lin, most qualified designers are in the first group and do similar work, while most design directors are in the second group because "knowing why" means they know strategy. "Professionals in the third group 'know how to dream,' so have to be true design talents with consummate skills for analysis and generalization to find needed answers, as well as deductive reasoning to develop new concepts. But, only rational dreams are realistic and desirable," Lin says.

Local Advantages

Taiwan does offer some advantages in the local design sector, Lin points out, one of which is the cultural pluralism or diversity in Taiwan that has effectively groomed a group of designers who are more skilled than counterparts in mainland China.

Able to compete against the South Korean design sector, which began aggressively upgrading its design prowess few years ago by emulating the Japanese-who encouraged many designers to go abroad for advanced training and self-upgrading, Lin says that Taiwan's industrial designers also have been developing rapidly due to heightened awareness for the importance of design and rising demand from local enterprises as mentioned earlier.

More importantly, Lin observes, is that Taiwan has more design talents who know how to dream and cooperate closely with local enterprises in high-tech and traditional industries to achieve mutually beneficial scenarios.

The design director urges local designers to ascertain motivation and start learning as early as possible, which may be easier said than done-because the increasingly fierce competition is accelerating the weeding out of newcomers, hence offering less training opportunities for young designers to deprive them of adequate maturation.

Being also optimistic about the ability of traditional industries to build increasing added- value into products, as well as those companies that have survived without moving offshore despite the challenges of higher costs and built global competitiveness, Lin says that the future looks promising for local designers as they have repeatedly proven themselves by creating attractive, world-class products.

However and with a hint of conflict of interest, the chief of the renowned Nova Design does not recommend major businesses in Taiwan to develop in-house design teams due to cost inefficiencies and high staff turnovers.