Design critic, Donald Norman once said, “A product that has good functions is important; a product that is easy to learn and use is also important. However, what’s more important is that the product has to make people feel a sense of pleasure.” The Alessi water boiler with bird whistle designed by American architect, Michael Graves is the best example of that.   Alessi’s design has always been fond by many, it can be attributed to two reasons, 1. the much praised Italian craftsmanship and 2. the design concept, “look for fun stuff in life.”  This water boiler with

If Maru-Waka didn’t get Jaime Hayón to do cross-over collaboration, I think we wouldn’t have even heard of the name, “Maru-Waka”, not to mention knowing the spirit and culture behind “Choemon-gama” the traditional ceramics kiln that has more than 130 years of history. What I’m trying to say is, “celebrity-effect” and “cross-over collaboration” still work like a charm to this day, especially when you can not only bring in free media report but create new spark in the product. Then that’s really a heck of investment!  The collaboration took place during the Tokyo Design Week in 2009. The president

Marketing people care about consumers’ purchase decision, therefore they evaluate and speculate their strategy upon key factors such as lifestyle, personality and environment, whether to use Facebook to create the hype or have celebrity to do the endorsement.    And the product people care about who their consumers are. Who are the products for and how to use it?    Target consumers are the ones we need to communicate with and they’re the ones who play our games. Today, I’d like to talk about how we define our target.    I often ask our R&D team, “Who are our

In the information era of high mobility, people demand not only convenience of information accessibility but also its availability, for example, you may download any application you want on your phone or take an interesting picture and upload the photo to Facebook to share with your friends. When we enjoy the convenience and information that technology brings through any device, we do it through “UI”.   What is UI(User Interface)? Actually UI is all around us, any interface that assists the interaction between a person and an item or between people is considered an UI, which includes icons, signs, sounds and

Barbie, a plastic doll without life, not only sold billion worldwide and live the legend for over half a century! From flight attendant, doctor, rock n roller, Barbie always stays on the front-line of fashion. She has thrown on numerous outfits, broken up and made up with boyfriend, Kenny countless times. Rumors about their relationship remains a mystery, her life story far more exciting and enticing than the people who own her. All of this attributed to her manufacturer, Mattel, the company that continuously create values for its product through stories.  Mattel not only infused life into its product,

The one and only: Collette, established on Saint-Honoré Street, Paris, in March 1997, is definitely the coolest, raddest fashion shop in the world. Combining creativity from fields of lifestyle, culture, design, music, aesthetics, trend, vogue and gourmet, Collette is the first “Concept” shop in the world and the first extreme “cross-over” brand.     Not so long ago, Collette just finished its garage shop front renovation project with its neighbor, Chanel. It is now ready to launch its new vigorous fashion concept shop, “The Away Project” on March 28th 2011. Collette packed a solid legion of brand power as

The overwhelming popularity of the Apple iPod or iPhone in recent years has reminded us how influential excellent UI designs can simplify our life and even determine the sales of products. Because the UI, or User Interface, is the first product impression for users when they start using a product, a poor UI design will only frustrate users who may put products aside after a few tries. Then, these cleverly or sophisticatedly designed features soon become useless decoration of products. This is because the effort that product designers put into product designs remains invisible to users, and they can

Most marketing campaigns are designed either to promote new products or services, or increase sales. Under this premise, buzz marketing campaigns are easier to strategize than promotions of brand images.    Some products or services are low involvement in nature. They are like air; we barely feel their existence, and even if we use them everyday, we are not motivated to pay attention to them. Products such toilet paper, drinks or shampoo fall into this category. However, if there is a new product launched at this time, marketers can easily generate buzz to communicate with customers, but so doing

“As the clock is ticking, skin becomes saggy. Why do I realize its importance only after time has passed?” The line from Tourbillon by Eason Chan has thoroughly revealed the treachery of time. Before the legendary 2012 doomsday, novelty notebooks and calendars recently introduced to the market seem to promise a better 2012 for us. The tattoo calendar from AGUA Design can mark dates on your skin, makig your body a carrier of dates to remind us that time flies. You feel apprehensive yet naughty.   AGUA, founded under the leadership of AGUA since 1994, is specialized in developing

I used this award-winning film to discuss about how to create a CF when I was working in China.     Epuron - the Power of Wind         https://youtu.be/6IjUkNmUcHc We usually say there are lots of techniques to express your creativity in a CF. One such techniques is how you can guide audiences – what kind of stories you intend to present to audiences with what kind of scenes. So, by the time audiences follow your tempo and finish the CF, they can still recall key messages stored in their memory.    Here comes the key

Chief Development Officer – Alan Kuo: “Bringing to you heart warming stories through simple homemade dishes and flavors in stores that are worthwhile to taste. Just like what I heard before: Our heart will warm up after we are full. So I recommend the Japanese drama that goes by the same name.”  Sneak Preview - Late Night Diner (Japanese drama)：      https://youtu.be/RgQtA4iJHsM Official Site – Late Night Diner (Japanese drama)：http://www.meshiya.tv About Late Night Diner    Abe Yaro’s Late Night Diner takes place at a diner that opens at mid-night and is located inside an alley in a busy

This year’s Game Developer Conference (GCD) was held in San Francisco Moscone Center from end of February to early March 2011. UI Design Center was very fortunate to have caught up and attended this gathering of global professional game designers. In fact, the gathering was filled with riveting experience sharing, ranging from casual to hardcore; from mobile, console to online games; from program, art, sound effect to marketing, covering each and every professional aspect in game industry.     However, we are not here to talk about what we’ve learned from that week in GDC (I’m sensing slight disappointment?)

Internet has already become one of the indispensible marketing tools in modern brand campaign. Official websites can be used to promote the business idea or launching of new products. Internet as a major communication tool has become a trend for years while the current trend is to combine virtual and real world. Some are moving from reality to virtual world and some are doing it the other way around. No matter what kind of method is used, the purpose is to build a deeper interactive relationship with the consumers. Now we will introduce some of these integration examples.  GT5

Xu Zhimo once said: "Beauty lies in the numbers". The phrase describes how "scale" can have a beauty of its own and the concept remains just in the digital age today nearly a century later. Daily Monster I have always been impressed by those that live up to their promises and stay at it. Especially those that go and commit themselves to coming up with new ideas 365 days a year without fail. In 2009, Stefan G. Bucher decided to do something crazy like this – Create a new and different monster every day. To produce a drawing every

Will we enter the "Post-PC Age" in just another few years? I am not sure myself, but the laptop is still the best option for mobile computing right now (maybe it will be replaced by the ASU Eee Pad Transformer? I hope not!). Since you are going to take your laptop with you, you should pick a laptop bag that is distinctive, practical and perhaps even fashionable!  Here I am more than happy to recommend COTEetCIEL from Paris. The main reason is because COTEetCIEL knows how to achieve just the right balance between technology and fashion so that even

  Creative Director, Kuo, “This is the first time a feature 3D animation produced by Taiwanese people in the history of Taiwan. Produced by F. Rhythm 3D Animation Company, the film was the result of 5 years of hard work and collaboration. Not only entertaining but educational in its content, it’s definitely an animation worthy of viewing and support! ”   Official Website：http://www.fr3d.com.tw/ Official Movie Blog：http://memoryloss.pixnet.net/blog Official Fan Page on Facebook：http://www.facebook.com/FR.MemoryLoss Movie Trailer：     ----------     Film Summary   After Ta lost her father, to console her grieving mother, this strong little girl accidentally erased her mother’s

  (缺圖) Alan Kuo, Chief R&D Officer at Gamania :  "We can sense through the matter of fact tone in the article by UNIQLO CEO Tadashi Yanai how he transformed a local clothing shop into a multinational enterprise one step at a time. Unlike the autobiographies of other successful people, the author dedicated many pages to reviewing the failures along the way, as well as how he managed to remain true to his original ideals even as he steered the company through transformation after transformation."    ------------   Abstract Written personally by UNIQLO Founder Tadashi Yanai, the book covers

I don’t want to talk to machines—a surprising way of speaking to users Some sudden situations we may run into when we go online, in addition to internet disconnect, computer breaks down, the most frequently encountered instance is ‘system message’. There are tons of system messages, some reminds you that you’ve selected the capital lock, some tells you your internet has been disconnected, some informs you the user name is not available. Most of the time, these messages are rigid, but the following message should bring a smile to your face: ▲“we have to check if you’re human.” This