N.P.D. China Project Brief

Design Project Brief 3

The following is the project brief for what i've called Project: N.P.D. China.

Project Context

Over the next 15-20 years more people will migrate to China’s cities for higher paying jobs. These working consumers once the country’s poorest will steadily climb the income ladder, creating a new and massive middle class. By around 2011 the lower middle class will number some 290 million people representing 44% or the urban population. A second transition is projected to occur in the following decade when hundreds of millions will join the upper middle class. By 2025 this segment will comprise of 520 million people – more than half the expected urban population of China.The second biggest IKEA store in the world after the Stockholm flagship store is in Beijing, China. IKEA like other furniture and furnishing retailers is hoping to cash in on the millions of new home buyers and they stand to profit from twin trends in China, both government-supported - millions of families buying new homes and, official efforts to drive economic growth by boosting consumer spending. IKEA, which in addition to the Beijing and Shanghai outlets has a store in the southern city of Guangzhou, plans to have a total of 10 stores within five years, including expansion to the country's west with an outlet being built in the city of Chengdu.The government started the trend moving in the late 1990s when, hoping to get state companies out of the business of housing their workers, it prodded families to buy homes, offering low-cost mortgages or bargain prices on older apartments. Coupled with rising urban incomes, that set off a building boom in the late 1990s in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities, with developers putting up forests of high-rises with thousands of new apartments. Decorating a home has become a cultural phenomenon, driving the creation of the career of Chinese interior designer and a crop of home-decor magazines with the latest in European design. Estimates of the size of China's home improvement market range from $15 billion to as much as $40 billion, with growth forecast at 10 to 20 percent a year. The government says overall retail sales rose nearly 13 percent in 2005.

Project Parameters

This project is about developing new furniture and furnishing product ideas for Chinese OEM manufacture that will help satisfy the emerging Chinese middle class. The IKEA model is used here for reference. The actual client you are working for is hypothetical but there is no shortage of potential clients existing in China and it is hoped that some of the project results will be taken through to manufacture (a separate briefing session will take place on this, see appendix below)

Developing new products requires both extensive research and a high degree of communication and dialogue to ensure success. Traditional modes of communication will be augmented with the use of ‘blogs’ and IM to enable a real-time updating of project progress.

Appendix

An exhibition of the final designs is planned to take place in the Unitec/Mayland Design Research Centre (MayDE) in Guangzhou, China. The exhibition is scheduled to take place at the same time as a design seminar and MayDE event in August 2007.NB. A presentation on MayDE will be given to you by Roger Bateman.

The academic staff will be conducting research into the effectiveness of online communication through out this project.

Keywords: China, Chinese middle class, lifestyle, chuppie, new product development, design research, furniture, urban living, prototyping, designer – client relationship, communication, online technologies.

http://itsmayde.blogspot.com
http://www.mayde.ch
http://www.maylandgz.com
http://ikea.com
http://catking.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA
http://www.thestandard.com.hk
http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/artists/name/huyang/archive/Shanghai%20Living%20(Shanghai%20renjia)%202