Reflections on Design Excellence through International Product Design Award Schemes

Abstract

This paper examines international product design award schemes to identify the relationship between successful manufacturers in design award schemes and their corporate design competitiveness. Four international product design award schemes - the International Design Excellence Award (IDEA), iF Product Design, Red Dot Product Design and Japanese Good Design Award (JGDA) - were selected from a group of 22 potential schemes. The awards were comparatively reviewed in detail, and the inter-dynamics of the benefits of the award schemes were discussed. In order to reveal the true value of winning awards in reflecting corporate design excellence, a new qualitative analysis method that takes into consideration the selectiveness of different awards was developed. The results from the qualitative analysis challenge the popular belief of simply regarding the number of awards won as corporate design excellence. The design excellence of the award winners were re-ranked according to the new method developed through this research. The findings of the research suggest that this could be a truer reflection of reality.