What is
a meaningful design?
What answer can we give to such a question? No
matter what the answer is, any designer would be
deep in thought when faced with this question.
The sheer hours Samsung Electronics designers
spent in contemplation, along with their
inspiration, experience, and understanding
altogether became the values that accumulated
over time to shape the design heritage and culture
of Samsung Electronics today. Here’s the video
that tells the ‘genuine story of Samsung Electronics
Designers,’ who have been making the utmost
effort to create meaningful design that partners
with its users to pave the path to a new future.
*The contents of the following interviews are personal opinions of
certain designers and do not represent the stance or strategy of
Samsung Electronics in any way.
My Samsung Life
What is my identity
as a Samsung
Electronics Designer?
Jae Neung Lee : To borrow from the title of a
popular TV show, my identity would be ‘Show me
the money.’ It’s not about designing a product that
sells well, but it’s about designing a product that
can satisfy a multitude of users. This is also my
design philosophy. I think that the more time I
spend working as a designer, the more I should be
creating designs that bring joy to users.
Soo Jung Lee : For me it’s being a ‘Multi-player.’ I’m
currently tasked with both product design and UX
design. As a result, I’m able to see both fields in a
holistic perspective and have developed an ability
to think critically in various ways. A product and its
UX design must interact with one another, and the
fact that I can meet these needs as a multi-player
is my identity as a designer.
Jae Won Choi : My identity as a Samsung
Electronics Designer is best described as a ‘Public
Bathhouse.’ When I feel overwhelmed during a
project, I sometimes experience the urge to quit
design. But when my work leads to a great finished
product, I fall in love with design all over again.
As you can see, my love for design goes back and
forth between the cold bath and the hot bath.
Hye Won Park : The show ‘PRODUCE 101.’ It’s
because as a designer, I’m continuously making the
effort to be ‘picked’ as a great UX design by users.
Users are like public producers searching for hot
talent, and designers are people who constantly
learn and create to showcase an even more
attractive design that can be picked out from the
crowd.
My Design Life
Which project was
the most meaningful
to you as a designer?
Jae Neung Lee : It was the Serif TV design with the
Bouroullec brothers. I did not participate in the
project personally, but I was pleasantly surprised
about the fact that it was a collaboration with the
Bouroullec brothers, who are world-renowned
designers in the field of furniture design. It was a
meaningful design that brought the television,
a digital appliance, into the world of furniture.
Many designers and users highly praised this
project.
Soo Jung Lee : For me it was the responsive
exterior design I did previously for TV and audio. It
was a reactive design that elevated the product
beyond its hard shell and provided useful functions
to users who approached the product. I developed
a deep interest in UX design through this project,
and eventually transitioned to a different task.
Jae Won Choi :The POWERstick PRO project. The
POWERstick PRO was designed to be the strongest
and most long-lasting stick vacuum cleaner, so it
inevitably had a heavier body than products from
other companies. For this project, the designers
were the ones who spearheaded the search for a
solution. It started as a progressive design, but
fortunately yielded a great result that led to
product production. This was the most meaningful
project for me.
Hye Won Park : The Galaxy Note’s S Pen translation
function. I came up with this idea when I saw a user
searching for individual English words he came
upon while reading an English dissertation on the
bus. This function allows users to quickly translate
a term by just placing the S Pen on top of a word
they do not know. This was a very meaningful
project for me because we alleviated an everyday
inconvenient for our users through a simple idea
that was inspired by a real-life experience.
My Advice to Wannabe Designers
What is a key quality
that wannabe designers
should possess?
Jae Neung Lee : Being responsible for one’s own
design is important. A designer should be able to
produce a meticulous design that comes from
careful and responsible contemplation of a user’s
entire experience with a product, starting from the
first encounter to the continued process of using
the product. If designers can trust and collaborate
with each other based on this notion of
responsibility and ownership, there will be no
greater synergy than that.
Soo Jung Lee : First, it’s having a unique
characteristic. You need to understand your
strengths and cultivate it into an expertise. The
second is having an open mind that can accept the
opinions of others, so that you can form a collective
perspective from the many opinions given to you
by these unique minds. I think being a great
designer is about taking in these various opinions
and interpreting it into your own language.
Jae Won Choi : When you are working on a project,
you will often be bombarded with a myriad of
opinions with each milestone you cross. The
process of absorbing these opinions and advice
crucial. After all, the ‘perseverance’ that enables
you to overcome this process will in turn help you
develop a great design.
Hye Won Park : You must have the endeavor to
envision a design that can make our day-to-day
lives more pleasant. To create such a design, you
need to take an ‘interest in people’ so that you can
understand human nature and empathize
others. It is also great to have as much as ‘curiosity’
as you can so that it pushes you to always question
the reasons behind peoples’ actions. Make sure you
are always being inspired. Thinking about the
motives behind any design, even for a simple app
you may use on your phone, is a great attitude to
have as a designer.
You can check out more
stories by Samsung Electronics
designers through the video
located on the top of the page.
The heartfelt sincerity
of our designers lies
within each advice given
to aspiring designers.
Based on this profound conversation, we could
understand that a designer’s philosophy and
inspiration always begin from the genuine
communication with others. As we listen to the
stories of our designers who yearn to provide joy to
users through Samsung Electronics design, we feel
hopeful for the creation of more ‘meaningful
designs’ in the future.
