Philips Turns to Locals for Design Ideas

Philips Turns to Locals for Design Ideas
As the Philips group vies for a larger presence and competes directly with other Asian electronic brands in the region, it has increasingly turned to the region for design ideas.

In Singapore, which houses one of its three design competence centres in Asia, Philips has brought in various local influences in the design process – for instance, the use of fictional personae when designing a product to suit certain target markets.

Personae are richly detailed descriptions of potential target customers. These include information on their values, motivation, needs, and behaviour derived from expert studies involving people in real life context.

These personae are stored in a database system and can be retrieved by designers.

Philips Electronics Singapore Pte Ltd design director Gavin Proctor said a number of Philips initial personae were developed as a result of the Connected Homes project conducted in Singapore last year.

“A designer, who has a specific target market, can just pick up a card and every detail about the target market will be displayed,” Proctor said, adding that it helped the company come up with a design which is very close to the target market's requirements.

He said that having the design centres close to the target market allowed Philips to add new personae and this project was ongoing at P