'The importance of Good Design’

What is good design?
WY: Design is an international language, but what kind of design can be called as good design? I think it should be viewed in different times and national conditions, even in different stages of its development. Literally, there are some differences in the understanding of “good” in the Eastern and Western context. In China, “good” is interpreted as “human’s feelings to a happy life” in the book of “Shuo Wen Jie Zi”, while Aristotle defined “good” as “the unity of individual goodness and the goodness among states”. If looking back the footprint of design in western countries, we can easily find that design developed from handicraft to industrial design, from “design for minority” to “design for the public”. Until the middle of 20th century, various schools of design were emerged gradually, with distinctivecharacteristics of their own era. Let’s go back to ancient China, the representative of “good design” is four inventions, but today, we have many new creators of “good design” such as Huawei, DJI, Xiaomi, etc.

For an international design event, the question of “what is good design” should be considered continuously. Before the establishment of DIA, we have spent a year studying the evaluation mechanism behind other prestigious awards all around the world, and summarized a set of contemporary international languages that can basically judge good design. Based on China’s national conditions of promoting the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, we extracted the core values of “Intelligence of Humanity, Wisdom of Life, Fusion of Tech & Art, Brain of Industry”, and designed DIA Evaluation Criteria, including 3 layers: 1) The fundamental layer emphasizes the “Principles of Design”, covering functionality, aesthetics, technicality, user-experience and sustainability. 2) The advanced layer emphasizes the “Direction of Design”, spanning contribution to humanity, industry and the future. 3) The top layer emphasizes the “Impact of Design” in regards to social influence and industrial development. Taking 2019 DIA Gold Award Hero Arm by Open Bionics as the example, it’s the world’s first 3D-printed bionic hand and the first to be available for children as young as 8 years old. Compared with traditional artificial limbs, it can not only be quickly assembled and printed, but also achieve a perfect fit with the arm, and its independently developed muscle electric sensors can realistically express hand movements, making the function of fingers and wrist almost no different from ordinary people. Its excellence is not only in technology, but also in adding superhero elements such as Disney in appearance, so that users won’t feel inferior and it inspired them to take pride in their differences, which is a truly inspiring design.

The need for design to be used to create a sustainable world – your views?
WY: A series of changes in the new era, such as science and technology development and consumption upgrading, are affecting the world. According to statistics, the global population will reach 9.7 billion by 2050. However, based on current population and consumption trends, we will need four Earths to maintain our lifestyle then! The resources of the earth are limited. How to maximize the use of the resources and control the amount of discharged waste to reduce the effects to the earth? Industrial design should play its role.

Six years ago, the United Nations officially adopted 17 sustainable development goals, among which Goal 12, in particular, highlighted the positive impact of industrial designers and design to the world. As a work to participate in and optimize all aspects of people’s daily life, it is imperative for the industrial designers to rethink the sustainable development of the products and conduct the new product development according to the demands of sustainable development. In 2016, the first session of DIA, we received a work named “Drinkable book”, a sewage filter actually, and also a popular science book, telling people how to drink and why they need to drink clean water. “Drinkable book” was designed for 2 billion people with living cost under $2 a day, so that everyone could use just one cent a day to drink safe and clean water. One page can be used for a month, and the whole book for about a year. It has been popularized in Bangladesh, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya and South Africa. It’s a good example. And “Drinkable book” was prized the Gold Award that year.

In the design 4.0 era, design is already a power to change society. Design perhaps challenged the current way of consumption and production, but it can also create more alternative possibilities for companies, communities, supply chains, the environment, and consumers, and even humans, which is a great opportunity to change our unsustainable living and consumption habits and thus achieve the purpose of creating a sustainable future.

Please tell us what the Design Intelligence Awards (DIA) will be looking out for this year?
WY: DIA collects four kinds of good design works worldwide annually: cultural innovation, living wisdom, industrial equipment and digital economy, respectively corresponding to the core values of Intelligence of Humanity, Wisdom of Life, Fusion of Tech & Art, Brain of Industry. At the same time, according to the social environment and historical background, DIA set the theme to let participants focus on the creative ideas. Recent years, all industries including design industry are facing both crisis and opportunities due to COVID-19. As international academic award with humanistic concern in the design industry, we set up “Design Symbiosis” as 2021 DIA theme, hoping to explore the new normal of human beings coexisting with COVID-19, let design and new technologies, new materials, new craftwork, new equipment coexist, to create for human’s future. We also launched “Design Combating COVID-19” initiative joint with global partners, called on global manufacturing enterprises, design companies, design colleges and universities deemed the crisis as the motive power of thinking future design value and achieving subversive transformation, provide more imaginative and innovative design solutions from nine main aspects of  new ecology, new security, new space, new, new social, new office, new education, new medical, new transportation, new possible.

DIA, on the one hand, should consider the global era background, and on the other hand, should also adapt to the modern technology development with constant renewal and iteration. In the past, industrial design was related to the system hardware and its appearance, but today we can find that design is for problem-solving, and the ways and carriers of problem-solving become more and more diversified. At present, with the emergence of new technologies such as IoT, AR, AI, 5G, more and more industries are integrating them into product development, production and enterprise management to accelerate intelligent transformation and upgrading. Many demonstration cases in the field of industry application are redefining the design industry. Thus, we start to focus on the category of “digital economy”. This category is mainly for “soft” products, such as APP, applet, or the interactive interface design of some goods. The content covers digital upgrade services in the fields of agriculture, industry, services, etc., including the design and application in smart city, smart business, smart medical, wisdom education, wisdom community, industrial Internet, artificial intelligence and blockchain. Indeed, in the past two years, we found that the proportion of works with digital technology, intelligent service is more and more high, such as 2020 DIA Gold Award “Alibaba Cloud - INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TWIN”, it is an important module of 3.0 Alibaba Cloud industrial brain, which can make complex industrial manufacturing process intelligent, and realize the interconnection of manufacturing enterprises in the real world.

How has the Design Intelligence Awards(DIA) evolved over the last few years?
WY: In the early days of DIA’s establishment, in addition to giving full play to the academic spirit and studying the evaluation and operation of many international renowned awards, our major challenge is how to let more international peers know DIA. At the beginning, we started 20,000 kilometers overseas tour&visit through a traditional way. We have been to Japan, Korea, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc. On the one hand, we hope to promote DIA ideas and values, and tell them that DIA would award 5 million bonuses annually. On the one hand, we told them our efforts to intellectual property protection. Almost all of them were surprised China now has such a broad mind and will to accept abundant designs around the world in accordance with international practices. Up to now, our contacts established in various countries have developed into independent workstations, responsible for the collection, evaluation and promotion in each country. Last year, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic hit the world, we immediately launched an initiative of “Design Combating COVID-19” with all overseas partners, which received actively support and response from global manufacturing enterprises, design companies, design colleges and universities.  In that year, many design works from excellent design companies, colleges and universities were attracted to register, realizing the growth both of the number of entries and the number of participating countries in such a special period. After five-year accumulation, we established tens of thousands of works database, and formed a solid cooperation mechanism with hundreds of international well-known design institutions, manufacturing enterprises and design media. Independent DIA overseas workstations are chaining into “Design Union”, which is on the path of achieving the mission of an international academic award under the eyes of the world.