Seymour Powell: Designing Dream Machines

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It's quite amazing how big companies like Seymour Powell also started their products by surveying the target market and brainstorming, which is the first step we're supposed to do whenever we have a design assignment.

The brainstorming session has no limits to it, so they just think and write down whatever things they want the market to sell. After that they choose the most useful and creative ideas out of all the ideas, and narrowing it down one by one. At this stage, they still don't know if it's plausible or not. Then, they sketch their concept ideas in less than 3 hours. After choosing the one concept that they think is the best, they make the model, ask other people's opinions and improving it over and over again. Up until the point where they're satisfied with it, they then make the real model. After that, they brought it to the market and put it on the shelf, then ask the marketing manager whether he likes it or not, whether it has its "personality" or character that distinguish it from the others. (It's the X-factor that leads us to buying the things we buy. X-factor is "Do I like it?", "Do I want it?")

In short:
Brainstorm > narrow the ideas > draw concept ideas > narrow the concept ideas > make model > make the real thing (after all the improvements until satisfied) > test it on the market (ask consumers what they feel about it) > go on production (if results are good).

For some of the projects, they need to survey their target market. So, for example, to design the Indian scooter, one of them went to India and observe, ask and investigate what the consumers buy and want, what they consider as good (the video shows that India has a different definition of sleek as angular and sharp, which is different from what Seymour Powell think of it). Then, they do all the brainstorming stage and went back to India to ask if they will like it or not, what they think about it. Then it goes on and on until the production stage.

What I learn from this video is that all designers start of by brainstorming and sketching their concept ideas, and the most important part is to ask other people's opinion, especially the target market. As designers, we have to receive whatever opinions are being given, so that we can improve our designs, because in the end, we are designing for the consumer and they're the one who's going to buy our products.

So in conclusion, designers work for consumers?