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China’s Shunde is going to host the 2018 DTech International Design and Science Conference on Sunday, December 9 to explore industrial design.
Co-organized by the local government, famous tech giants and media agencies, the industrial design feast will explore four core issues – “Design + Artificial Intelligence (AI)”, “Design+ Intelligent Manufacturing (IM)”, “Design + Intelligence Experience” and “Design + Investment” – for in-depth discussions among attenders including Hu Qizhi, Secretary General of Guangdong Industrial Design Association, Li Qiang, General Manager of Midea Smart Home, Christian Schwamkrug, the Design Director of Porsche Design, Soon-In Lee, Chair of Asia Design Network, David Waterman, Chief Designer of AT&T/VTECH, Du Baonan, CDO of SINGULATO, Gao Zheng, general manager of JD Product Crowd-Funding Division and other designing top guns.
When we talk about industrial design, we refer to the design of industrial products based on the designers’ own interpretation of engineering, aesthetics and economics. Can soda sales be affected by the refrigerators storing them? One company in Shunde successfully improved cola sales by over 13 percent by re-designing the traditional aluminum freezers to a glass one with AI technology. Their keen sense of life has redefined the freezers from a container to keep things inside cold to being a way to promote products. After intelligent upgrades on the system and outlook, the freezers can provide a better shopping experience for customers, as well as a showcase of products and their brands.
This is the charm of industrial design, with which a common freezer can be imbued with magical power, to bring a change to users’ experience, more profits of the products and more market shares to the vendors.
Located at the center of southern China’s Pearl River Delta, Shunde is one of the top three manufacturing regions in China. The dense industrial conditions have driven up the demand for industrial design, and mushroomed the prototypes to relevant business. In the 1990s, China’s leading home appliance builder Midea established a series of design centers in Shunde and absorbed the first group of talents here, after which Shunde started developing and exploring. In 2004, dozens of industrial design companies such as East Innovation set up in Shunde, enabling the district to step into cluster diversified development. In 2009, the booming technology has changed a lot of sectors, leaving a huge impact on the way products being designed and manufactured. The Guangdong Industrial Design City (GIDC) was created then and the industrial design industry in Shunde has entered a new stage thanks to the support from the local government. Following the sprouting of new industrial enterprises, designing talents poured into the boomtown
After ten years of development, the GIDC has become not only the home of the Shunde manufacturing industry, but also a wide platform of great aggregation effects. Spanning over 2.8 square kilometers with an investment of over 2.1 billion yuan, the GIDC is now a base for a large public-service cluster featuring industrial design, and has built a one-stop service outsourcing system involving market research, creative design, pilot plant test, manufacture, trade, exhibition, communication, training, hatching and public services. The industrial design enterprises born in cradle goad each other and grow up together, benefiting from the help and support of its six main platforms including trading, financing, intellectual property transforming platform, talent introduction and training, generic technology research and brand building.
Till now, over 300 industrial design headquarters have taken roots in Shunde, with nearly 50,000 designers and over 40 hi-tech design enterprises protechnicalhnology support to the entire industry. A document issued by the Shunde government in September said a 1.5-billion-yuan investment is planned for the area, a move to build the “Designed in Shunde” label. As the core of “Technical Shunde” construction, the new plan will focus on technology to develop a creative industrial cluster featuring industrial designs.
The new plan is expected to fill the gaps in intelligent manufacturing in China’s Pearl River Delta and become a superior innovative force for the national manufacturing industry, with a high-end platform and outstanding talent and government support. On December 9, the DTech conference will be held in GIDC after vigorous support from the World Design Organization, Korea Institute of Design Promotion, Guangdong Industrial Design and Innovation Services Alliance, Taihuoniao Technology, Midea, Country Garden and other companies and organizations.
Furthermore, human resource is another fuel to power the development of industrial design in Shunde. The Shunde Industrial Design Institute has signed an agreement with Shantou University in 2016 to train postgraduates unitedly and offer them R&D opportunities, trying to transforming the professional knowledge into practices. More cooperating with well -known associations and universities are being planned, together with other moves such as building a technical intelligent industrial park to gather more enterprises and organizations on smart manufacturing, to enhance the manufacture capital’s world influence and achieved world-class development.
Here’s the agenda:
