—
GORDON BRUCE INTRODUCED ME to Ted Shin, one of his best Korean
designers. Ted had approached Bruce and Miho when they had started the
lab, handing over a stack of paper filled with hundreds of design concepts
for wristwatches that he had created. In the mid-1990s, Samsung made
analog watches, mostly for Middle Eastern markets.
“They interviewed every designer who applied,” Ted told me. Of the
company’s seven hundred designers, twelve got acceptance letters. “I was
one of the twelve.”
On September 1, 1995, classes began at the newly finished IDS. Bruce
entered the classroom and introduced himself and his curriculum. Then, on
day two, he pulled out a banana.
“Nature is the best designer,” he explained. “The banana fits in your
pocket. It comes in its own sanitary package. It’s biodegradable. And the
color indicates when the fruit is ripe.”
“It’s intuitive. I know you don’t eat it this way!” he joked, pretending to
eat the banana like an ear of corn. “The peel protects the inside. That’s
sanitation.” He peeled it open and took a bite. “Potassium! Delicious!
Easily manufactured! It’s the biggest market in the world. Everybody loves
bananas!
“Now imagine if you could design a product that uses these same
principles.”
A befuddled silence fell over the classroom.
“You mean,” asked a student, “you want us to design a cellphone in the
shape of a banana?”
When Bruce and Miho received their end-of-term reviews, the Samsung
designers marked them lower than South Korean lecturers, complaining
that the two Americans didn’t tell them what to do. They were accustomed
to the rote memorization and top-down leadership style taught by South
Korea’s educational system.
The solution, Bruce and Miho decided, was to get them out of the
classroom. Only by relieving them of the presence of their bosses and
bringing them on a journey around the world could they provide Samsung’s
designers with inspiration.