American IDEA Award judge Li Shenghong generously reveals his unique design mentality: What the heart cares about is far more than what the eyes see.
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Li Shenghong is a member of the American International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) jury and the only Asian among them (the person on the far left of the picture wearing light-colored clothes. Image source: iDSA official website)
This article is reprinted from MIX 2018 Innovation Design Annual Conference, and the author is Deng Wenhua. Thank you for authorizing “Content Hacker” website to reprint. Thank you hereby.
[Why we reprint this article] The purpose of design is not just to make a product or space “good-looking”. As content creators, we must also think more about whether our content planning is the same as what the design master Li Shenghong mentioned - “What the author cares about in his heart is far more than what the reader sees.”
Li Shenghong, who is well-known in the global design community, his personal information is not difficult to find. If you search for this name on the Internet, you will get a lot of information related to design awards, including [American International Design Excellence Award] (http://www.idsa.org/IDEA) (IDEA) Gold Award, [German Braun Design Award] (https://www.braunprize.org/en/) (Braun Prize), American Core77 Design Award, German Red Dot (Red Dot Design Award) Gold Award (Best of the Best), Spark International Design Award (Spark Design Award), [European Product Design Award] (https://www.productdesignaward.eu/) (European Product Design Award) Gold Award, Germany’s [iF Award] (https://ifworlddesignguide.com/if-design-award), [Dyson Design Award] (https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/) (James Dyson Award) and many other awards. Since he studied industrial design and electrical engineering at National Cheng Kung University as a student, some articles directly referred to Li Shenghong as an “academic master”. I thought that being a top student was a natural thing, but when I interviewed him, I discovered that winning awards was only a small part of the race between him and himself.
Li Shenghong shared a fable with everyone. Someone put a shark and a group of small fish into the same pool, separated by a reinforced glass plate. At first, the shark will try to rush over to eat the small fish, but it will hit the glass and cannot eat it. After a long time, it will give up. The experimenter later secretly took out the glass plate, but the restrained shark still would not swim over. Li Shenghong said: “I am afraid that I will become that shark. I would rather keep failing and fail forward. Moving forward through failure is more valuable than regret.”
Compared with his award-winning transcript, what created Li Shenghong’s talent was not a stroke of a pen inspired by excitement, but a sense of crisis and discipline.
Use competitions to push yourself, designers can’t stop
Li Shenghong has shown artistic talent since he was a child. In kindergarten, I could use toy clay to make ashtrays in the shapes of helicopters and swans. Then I learned drawing, watercolor and oil painting for 10 years. Later, he did not choose art and wanted to apply for architecture, but because he did not score well in Chinese, he entered the industrial design department by chance.
He has artistic talent, but he did not study architecture but majored in engineering. It is still within the scope of understanding, but why did he go to repair electrical engineering?
Li Shenghong thinks this way: If a designer can only do the appearance of a product, and the structure inside the product usually relies on engineers, then why can’t he master it all by himself? Therefore, he spent 7 years studying two departments while applying cross-field knowledge into his works. As a result, he successively won international awards such as iF, Red dot, IDEA and Core77. The author did not ask about the creative concepts of each work one by one, but was curious about Li Shenghong’s motivation for constantly participating in competitions.
He answered quite simply: “Winning awards is a tool to push yourself.”
Li Shenghong believes that the life of a designer lies in the “portfolio”. Therefore, he set a goal to create at least one work he likes every year and signed up for the competition. Firstly, there is a clear deadline that forces you to complete it before the deadline; secondly, when faced with different awards, you will try more design methods; thirdly, if you win an award, you will also run a personal brand and do the best publicity for the individual, the team, and the school. “You have to show, not just to tell.” It’s better to make a good dish than to make it.
Li Shenghong’s characteristic of challenging himself across borders remained consistent after he joined the army and went out into society. When the replacement service was distributed, he chose to work as a prison guard in a prison in order to experience a different life. After leaving society, he joined an internationally renowned design consulting company and served as an adjunct associate professor at Fudan University [Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts] (http://www.siva.edu.cn/).
From college to going out into society, Li Shenghong often maintains two identities at the same time. The level of hard work can be imagined. He said that although he sleeps relatively less, he does not feel overwhelmed. The main reason is that he is interested and passionate, and he finds inspiration in life and work. The two interact and nourish each other. “If you are really passionate about this matter, you will keep thinking about it, even when eating and sleeping, you will naturally think about it, and you will unconsciously find that time flies by.”
See yourself as a citizen of the world and provide unique perspectives
Li Shenghong is talented, disciplined and hardworking. After starting to work in society, he still never forgets to push himself. As a student, he and his team proposed the “TetraPOT” design project that combines natural mangroves with artificial wave absorbing blocks, realizing the concept of sustainable ecological coastal protection and winning the US International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) Environmental Category Gold Award and the Red Dot Design Environmental Category Award. Award), European Product Design Award (European Product Design Award), ranked among the top 20 in the world in the James Dyson Award, and was specially invited to share it by the 2017 [Dubai Design Week] (http://www.dubaidesignweek.ae/). His ability to win awards is still astonishing, but his focus has shifted from consumer product design to design that can exert a greater social impact.
Due to his outstanding performance in design, Li Shenghong has been invited to join the American International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) jury of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) since 2017, becoming the only Asian on the team. Regarding his own origin, he is more concerned about what unique perspectives he can provide as a world citizen with roots in Eastern culture.
Speaking of viewpoints, from a game player who passively accepts criticism to a game changer with the power to set rules, plus working and discussing with design directors from Nike, Google, Frog, etc., as well as deans and professors from many well-known design schools, he was quite shocked, and his perspective was very different and diverse.
Take car design as an example. What we look at is not just whether the appearance is beautiful. We also need to look at the industrial chain and the ecosystem to explore whether the design is “right and appropriate” in the context of the entire market and even the historical framework. During the five-day review process, Li Shenghong debated with world-class experts from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, which made him re-examine many things. Li Shenghong’s reflection is: “As a designer, what you care about in your heart is far more than what you see with your eyes.”
What Li Shenghong wants to share with you this time in MIX 2018 is the project he just launched for the Shanghai Library last year. In the service experience design case of Innovation Space, the breadth of thinking is “far beyond what can be seen with the eyes.”
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Thinking about how to redesign the innovation space of Shanghai Library from the “3E” (Photo source: Sheng-Hung Lee)
Shanghai Library (hereinafter referred to as the picture above) was established in 1952. In 1995, it merged with the Shanghai Institute of Science and Technology Information to become a comprehensive research-based public library and industrial information center, ranking among the top 10 largest city libraries in the world. [Creation. New Space] (http://www.oiponline.org/blog/0e11831715e) is a newly planned area of the Shanghai Library in May 2013. It is affiliated with the Reader Service Center. It is a new library space with the theme of cultural creativity. Through its comprehensive functions such as display, communication, and information acquisition, it provides users with learning channels other than reading. In 2017, Shangtu plans to re-evaluate and improve the original design from the perspective of user needs, and prepare for the new museum in two years. Li Shenghong pointed out that there is currently only one creation in the picture above. New space, the new museum will plan a large area of innovation space in the future. “If we can figure out a clear value proposition (value proposition) before designing, it will save a lot of design costs and time to find directions later.” Since Li Shenghong usually teaches and searches for information on the above picture, and he is a heavy user, he thought it would be better to communicate with the above picture on design from the perspective of a creative worker, school teacher, and library user, and the two parties hit it off.
Open your ears and increase the tolerance of design
This project is different from previous industrial design and product design. The focus is on service, experience, the relationship between space and users. It is based on “people” and takes surrounding services and touch points into design considerations. Before shaping the value proposition, he wanted to find out the definition and story behind it. However, after conducting the first round of interviews with librarians, he found that they seemed to be divergent. In particular, the connection between the target group and the use of the venue was not close enough, and the degree of benefit to users was not obvious.
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Interviews with librarians and users during the design process (Photo source: Sheng-Hung Lee)
On the other hand, Li Shenghong also observed that the highly educated librarians pictured above can also play more value. As the person in charge said, “The reason for wanting to change is not just for the space, but also for each member of the team.” So in addition to space design and furniture design, “character design” was added to the design tone.
In the past, if you wanted to hold an event as shown above, it was mainly planned by the organizer, and the librarians only did assistive work, and the subsequent benefits were not great. At present, the library will further develop the event into a workshop, using the expertise of librarians to participate in event design. For example, when holding a parent-child education lecture, some librarians are responsible for contacting experts in the field, some are responsible for preliminary publicity, and some are responsible for on-site implementation, creating an atmosphere of joint management and knowledge sharing, and further creating different [experiences] for users (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BD%BF%E7%94%A8%E8%80%85%E7%B6%93%E9%A9%97).
It is one thing to enlarge the scope of the design, but more importantly, it is to promote the ability of the above image to scale. Originally created in the above picture. The librarians of the new space are like landlords, simply renting rooms to tenants, and it is up to the tenants to plan exhibitions and find users. It’s fine when there is only one room, but if it expands to more than 100 rooms in the future, it will be impossible to control quality and improve innovation by only renting out rooms. The value of the new space; therefore, it is necessary to carefully consider how to improve the value and spatial positioning of librarian services.
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Completed picture of the Shanghai Library Innovation Space (Photo source: Sheng-Hung Lee)
Designers are not only concerned about the design itself, but also include curation, training, education, marketing, etc. In this regard, Li Shenghong not only did not find it hard, but also encouraged MIX 2018 attendees: “We need to increase the tolerance of design!” He mentioned that he once led a workshop for the owner. The lighting was beautiful, the atmosphere was good, and every aspect was great. Unexpectedly, a colleague in charge of marketing asked: “Why is there no fragrance in the workshop space?” It made him realize more deeply that “different people’s opinions have their own value. You must know how to listen and how to use them in the right place.”
The interview was pleasant, and in a blink of an eye it was time for Li Shenghong to go to the gym. He said that he usually likes weightlifting and running. I asked him what kind of music he listened to. Before he could say anything, he said that he would open several YouTube knowledge-based channels and listen to them on the treadmill while thinking about things.
It turns out that the shark fable Li Shenghong mentioned earlier is not just an example, but has also been integrated into his daily life to prevent himself from becoming the restricted shark anytime and anywhere.
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