The night-walkers of Uganda

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The future of design?
Ian Sample, science correspondent
November 24, 2007
A Japanese innovator wants to change face 
of shopping and replace mass-produced 
goods with people-power ideas 
By the age of 40, Kohei Nishiyama wants to be
financially independent, an inventor, and have a 
robot dog. The 37-year-old Tokyo-based designer
who is the founder of Elephant Design has a
dream, and he hopes it will change the face of
British shopping.
He wants to empty the shops of boring, mass-
marketed and mass-produced items and replace
them with products that we - the people - have
helped to develop. Nishiyama calls it ‘Design
to Order’ and the idea is simple. Anyone with
a unique idea, for anything from a robotic web
camera to a magnetic bathroom mirror, can post
an image and description on his website. Other
people can log on to suggest improvements to
the design. If enough people then vote for the
product, he makes a deal with a manufacturer
and the product is made.
“There are so many mass-produced products
in shops because that’s how large companies
work. Our idea is to give people what they want
by involving anyone of any age or nationality who
has a good idea,” says Nishiyama.
The scheme has been running in Japan for a
few years. Young designers use it to present
their ideas before they make something that may
fail. The company has recently set up a test site
with retailer Muji to help develop products for its
stores. One idea, for transparent sticky memos,
suggested by a 21-year-old student will be
marketed next month. She will get royalties from
every pack that is sold.
London-based designers The Division have
placed three designs on Nishiyama’s website:
a clock that is vague about the time, a set of
solar-powered, glowing garden furniture, and a
wastepaper bin that tidies ugly cables.
David Tonge, founder of The Division, said: “We
wanted a relaxed clock for the home, so the hour
hand is on the outside, and like a sundial it’s
fairly vague. But in the centre, it displays minutes
in a digital form so you can use it if you’re doing
something like cooking pasta for 13 minutes.”
Any item on the site that gets 1,000 votes is
put forward for manufacture. As of yesterday,
Tonge’s clock had received 39 votes, the cable
tidier 22 votes and the garden furniture nine. The
product with the most votes, is a bathroom mirror
that is also a whiteboard. The designers hope
the buyers will be busy professional people who
can write appointments and notes on it, attach
memos like fridge magnets, and then see them
as they brush their teeth in the morning.
For now the test site is only free to designers,
but Nishiyama says he will take ideas from
other people if there are 10 more people who
support the idea. “Because it’s a new thing,
a lot of people are posting ideas and some of
them are rubbish,” says Tonge. “But it can be
surprising. There are people out there, who
are not designers, with some good, interesting
ideas, and some of those may end up in
the shops.”