Interesting Take on Emotion in Product Design: "Soap" vs. "Perfume"

It's nice to see even mainstream news organizations paying attention to the chronically underexposed design departments of major corporations. These days guys like Ralph Gilles and of course, Jonathan Ive get a lot more ink than we'd have seen a decade ago. Most recently Reuters got inside the design department at Samsung Electronics to talk shop with Lee Minhyouk, Samsung Mobile's design veep.

While the meaty article looks at the expected areas of business differences between Samsung and chief rival Apple (the former manufactures their own components, the latter must outsource, etc.) and examines the mutual sue-fest the companies have recently engaged in, what most caught our eye was this analogy about product design:

To become a truly innovative company, Samsung needs to explore the art, as well as the science, of what it does, critics say.

"Samsung is like a fantastic soap maker," said Christian Lindholm, chief innovation officer of service design consultancy Fjord based in Finland. "Their products get you clean, lathers well. However, they do not know how to make perfumes, an industry where margins are significantly higher. Perfume is an experience. Perfume is meant to seduce, make you attractive and feel good. You love your perfume, but you like your soap."

One point hinted at in the article seems to be that Samsung is viewing design as a science that can be learned, but that they have not managed to harness capital-A Art. That's a thorny problem that every design university Dean has grappled with, and Apple's mastery of this issue creates as much profit as it does envy.

That doesn't mean Samsung doesn't understand the problem; it just means they're not there yet. But at least one fun fact in the article shows they are trying to get there: Samsung's designers get sent on inspirational trips to places like Iguazu Falls in Brazil and the Incan city of Cuzco in Peru! Now that's a sweet gig, and for the sake of overworked ID'ers everywhere, I hope that becomes recognized as a recipe for design success!

Posted by Rachel Briggs