Concept Development & Design Freeze

Concept developments of the dresser draw.









The concept developments cover from the 'bins' to the base stand.

After this it comes down to experimenting with the right material for the job...

Concept Research Refocus

Shifting the products purpose and direction requires a new focus. So i have decided to refocus the target market on middle-class single females of China.

Chinese Women Have More Choices in Marriage

Chinese traditional culture considered marriage and motherhood the only real option for women,but today, it's only one choice for many Chinese women.

Miss Wei, 37, is still living on her own in Dalian city of northeast China's Liaoning Province. A graduate of a prestigious university, Wei opened her own company several years ago. Listing "driving, travel, and buying brand-name clothes", as hobbies, Wei said she was "very satisfied" with her current single life. She was not celibate, but did not want to compromise by getting married.

In China, more women like Wei choose to be single. In 1990, the capital city of Beijing had 200,000 singles. But currently, the number of single women in Beijing and Shanghai, the two biggest cities in the country, has surpassed 1 million.

The latest statistics from the All-China Women's Federation show that in the past five years registered marriages have decreased year by year, dropping in 2002 by 1 million on the number in 1998. Meanwhile, 1.2 million couples divorce every year, leaving many women single mothers.

"Though not all of them feel happy with their single status, they indeed have the choice to stay single," said Zhang Sining, a researcher with the Liaoning Institute of Social Sciences.

In addition to choosing to be single, more women delayed getting married and giving birth, or chose not to have children at all.

Horizon Survey and Index Network carried out a sample telephone survey recently on 1,031 residents aged from 18 to 60 in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Wuhan cities. The result shows that compared with 1997, 11.3 percent less people questioned chose to have just one child, while 1.1 percent more people chose not to have children, and 3.9 percent more preferred to stay single.

Society gives women sufficient space to make their own choices and to decide their own destiny, said Jiang Yongping, Chinese women's affairs specialist.

Jiang said economically-independent Chinese women did not have to rely on their husband to buy houses, cars or clothes and society provided women more opportunities to join in social life.

Bao Qianyi, a 28-year-old teacher in the Foreign Economic and Trade University, has been married for four years. Bao and her husband have decided not to have a child.

"Marriage and motherhood are no longer obligations for women, but a status women can choose," said Bao, adding that she did not want anything, even a child, to disturb the harmony of her relationship.

Zhang said China was in a period of social transition, in which different cultural information was clashing to produce different moral values.

"But no matter what women choose to be, society is more tolerant of their choices," said Zhang.

But men viewed the diversification of marriage choices differently. Though many of the male respondents recognized and accepted the trend, most preferred the more traditional thought that "marriage is the best end-result for women."

Cao Yudong, a Ph.D student in the China Institute of Social Sciences, said that although he could accept the thought of diversified life styles, he himself had no intention of marrying a woman with such radical ideas.

http://english.people.com.cn/200308/25/eng20030825_122990.shtml

Concept Dilemma

I have choosen to push the "waterdrop" concept idea. The "screen" concept just doesnt have a strong enough intended purpose and its direction was abit thin...so that is pretty much the base of the problem. Im going to use the "waterdrop" concept idea and push out a new design concept by the end of 25th of May and have a design freeze on the 27th of May. I will shift its placement from the living room, infront of the front door (screen) to it being used in the bedroom for its main and only purpose,to store clothes (dresser draw). This will give it a more strong sense of existences and why i have created it.

Concept POG

This is the POG, just random products pulled from company websites.

Concept Process

I am in the process of completing my concepts. The following are some of my undeveloped concepts.

I have nailed down the concept i would like to work on. (Also another maybe)

1) A screen (furniture)

2) A holder for sauce bottles (maybe)

In the next week i will be following up on further research on the P.O.G for one of these choosen concepts.

Concept Read: China Made

Book Description

"Chinese people should consume Chinese products!"

This slogan was the catchphrase of a movement in early twentieth-century China that sought to link consumption and nationalism by instilling a concept of China as a modern "nation" with its own "national products." From fashions in clothing to food additives, from museums to department stores, from product fairs to advertising, this movement influenced all aspects of China's burgeoning consumer culture. Anti-imperialist boycotts, commemorations of national humiliations, exhibitions of Chinese products, the vilification of treasonous consumers, and the promotion of Chinese captains of industry helped enforce nationalistic consumption and spread the message--patriotic Chinese bought goods made of Chinese materials by Chinese workers in factories owned and run by Chinese.

In China Made, Karl Gerth argues that two key forces shaping the modern world--nationalism and consumerism--developed in tandem in China. Early in the twentieth century, nationalism branded every commodity as either "Chinese" or "foreign," and consumer culture became the place where the notion of nationality was articulated, institutionalized, and practiced. Based on Chinese, Japanese, and English-language archives, magazines, newspapers, and books, this first exploration of the historical ties between nationalism and consumerism reinterprets fundamental aspects of modern Chinese history and suggests ways of discerning such ties in all modern nations.

China Made is a good read, first seeing the size of it, it kind of scared me >_< It outlines the questions "why shouldn't China use chinese made products?
It goes much deeper by examining the effects of westeren cultural pleasures that effected the chinese consumer needs, giving birth to a massive market that was not seen by the Chinese themselves.
For me the most interesting part is having a much better understanding of cultural influences on product markets and influence that create consumer needs, in this case how west influence China and now, how China influences the west; Its a funny never ending tag-war.

Davo.

Blog Introduction [PROJECT CHINA]

Well I finally started my blog on PROJECT CHINA. From here on i will document how i go about the project, my trials and errors, my fails and success. I hope this documenting will help others understand my direction in this project so lets get onto it....... FIGHT OH! OH!