Product Designer Research--Naoto Fukasawa

Naoto Fukasawa is a Japanese product designers who burned at 1956. After he graduated from Tama Art University with a degree in product design in 1980, he started to worked at IDEO and helped establish the IDEO Tokyo office. Since 2002 Fukasawa has been worked at MUJI as an advisory board member and worked on the development of many of their products. During the period he worked in Muji he provides his concept which is 〝without taught〞. It means that people can operate the product without thinking. For example, when you drink water, you don’t think about the glass. You drink from it. Fukasawa has created a lot of product based on this concept. One day the designer was watching a CD spin, and it reminded him of a fan. Then, he created a disc player that looked like a kitchen fan and it could be paste on the wall with a long string to pull to turn on the radio. When people see the string they can pull the string without thinking what is the string’s function. Moreover, his product design in Muji focus on the relationship between people and environment. He said that product do not exist alone, it interacts with the environment, so he createss some appliances which is match with environment or users.

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I do like Fukasawa's product so much and I think he is an outstanding designer. It is because of his attitude that he always observe the surrounding, including the environment and people's movement and action. So, that he can create the product is entirely fit to user's need. His products are not complicated, they are very simple and elegant but functional. This is what I attempt to do, always look around the surrounding, thinking, notice the problem and solve it.

Reference

Book

Bill Moggridg, Tim Brown, Kenya Hara, Antony Gormley Studio, Naoto Fukasawa