Industrial designers have historically specialised in a single product class. However as industries turn into more and more interconnected and AI reshapes the design course of, designers are transferring throughout disciplines greater than ever earlier than. From sensible home equipment to juvenile merchandise, from {hardware} to mushy items, the merchandise might change, however the aim stays the identical: designing round folks.
Kaiyuan Chen, an industrial designer primarily based in New Jersey, has skilled this shift firsthand. Drawing on tasks throughout shopper electronics and child merchandise, he displays on how industrial designers can adapt to totally different industries whereas holding folks on the middle of each design determination.
Trying throughout the design business, manyz practitioners set up their careers by specializing in a single product class. Kaiyuan Chen, nonetheless, has efficiently bridged the hole between premium sensible dwelling home equipment and shopper juvenile mushy items—a uncommon demonstration of actually cross-category design experience.
All through his profession, he has remained dedicated to a core design philosophy: design ought to serve folks, not merchandise. Whereas product classes might differ in kind and performance, genuine person expertise stays the enduring basis of each design determination. Guided by this constant and sensible human-centered design methodology, Chen has repeatedly delivered excellent work throughout a variety of vastly totally different product sectors.
His achievements have earned widespread recognition from the worldwide design neighborhood, receiving prestigious honors together with the Pink Dot Design Award, the Worldwide Design Awards (IDA), and the MUSE Design Awards, amongst others. These accolades not solely acknowledge the craftsmanship, innovation, and execution of his work, but in addition affirm the professionalism and common applicability of his human-centered design philosophy. In consequence, he has established a particular identification as one of many rising designers acknowledged for excellence throughout a number of design disciplines.
“Many industrial designers discover totally different product classes at school,” Chen says. “However in skilled observe, each business has its personal design logic. What by no means modifications is the duty to know the folks you’re designing for.”
For {hardware} merchandise, aesthetics and performance are inseparable. Good design just isn’t solely about look—it should even be dependable, intuitive, and pleasing to make use of. Meaning understanding how folks really work together with a product, then utilizing design to unravel actual issues.
Whereas growing an ultrasonic cleaner, Chen’s staff recognized overheating and water resistance as two main person issues by means of intensive analysis. As an alternative of treating them as purely engineering points, the staff approached them as design alternatives.
Guided by a forward-thinking human-centered design philosophy, Kaiyuan Chen and his staff recognized customers’ most crucial security issues and redesigned the product round a modular thermal structure that improved each warmth dissipation and water resistance whereas holding manufacturing sensible.This method successfully addressed widespread points in family home equipment, together with overheating and insufficient water resistance. In contrast with the business’s extra conservative engineering-driven fixes, the answer efficiently balanced person security, manufacturability, and industrial viability, overcoming the longstanding limitations of conventional {hardware} design, which frequently prioritizes technical specs over real-world person expertise.
By way of meticulous user-focused innovation and robust end-to-end implementation capabilities, the challenge was honored with the Gold Winner title on the 2026 MUSE Design Awards and the DNA Paris Design Awards. Relatively than counting on superficial novelty, these worldwide recognitions exhibit that breaking away from typical engineering pondering and permitting human must drive design optimization can produce extra refined, mature, and impactful industrial merchandise. Additionally they additional validate the reliability and forward-looking nature of Kaiyuan Chen’s human-centered design method.
In contrast with the technical optimization required in {hardware} design, mushy items design calls for a far deeper understanding of person eventualities and considerably stronger provide chain integration capabilities—areas which have turn into Kaiyuan Chen’s defining strengths as a designer.
Right now, the infant and youngsters’s juvenile mushy items business is more and more constrained by product homogenization. Many merchandise emphasize visible enchantment whereas compromising practicality, and rising value pressures typically make it tough to ship each high quality and person expertise. In 2024, Chen led the design of an mass-market maternity and child organizer for Walmart, enterprise the challenge amid escalating tariffs and stringent value controls. Guided by the ideas of design begins with eventualities, worth outweighs kind, and price ought to serve the person expertise, he challenged the business’s typical “form-first” growth mannequin and pioneered a reverse design methodology centered on materials analysis, situation evaluation, and exact worth allocation.
Relatively than designing across the product itself, Chen started by totally analyzing the entire journey of fogeys caring for youngsters open air. Storage zones have been deliberate in response to genuine utilization patterns, making certain that essentially the most ceaselessly used necessities remained instantly accessible. By way of fastidiously thought-about scenario-based design selections, the organizer simplified on a regular basis parenting routines whereas decreasing cognitive and bodily burden for customers.
Going through strict funds constraints, Chen seen value not as a limitation to design, however as an integral element of it. As an alternative of sacrificing high quality or simplifying important person experiences, he strategically allotted assets by eliminating non-essential ornamental components and concentrating funding on the options customers genuinely understand and worth most.
To attain this steadiness, Chen immersed himself in each stage of the availability chain and established an built-in end-to-end growth course of. He launched an authentic systematic decomposition framework for mushy items design, remodeling what was historically conceived as a single bag right into a coordinated multi-component system. By methodically eradicating low-value ornamental options, the challenge redirected restricted assets towards enhancing the core parenting experiences that matter most to customers.
This revolutionary methodology successfully addressed one of many mushy items business’s longstanding challenges—the perceived trade-off between value effectivity and person expertise—whereas offering a sensible and scalable mannequin for delivering high-quality design in reasonably priced shopper merchandise.
The organizer was finally launched throughout greater than 3500 Walmart shops all through North America and generated an overwhelmingly constructive market response.. Its scenario-driven, value-oriented design method has since turn into a significant reference for the evolution of comparable merchandise throughout the business, additional reinforcing Kaiyuan Chen’s repute as a designer distinguished by cross-disciplinary experience, sturdy execution capabilities, and significant innovation.
Reflecting on his expertise, Chen believes that working throughout disciplines is changing into the norm for industrial designers. But the best worth of crossing industries just isn’t merely studying new supplies or manufacturing processes—it’s gaining a deeper understanding of individuals.
“The merchandise might change,” he says, “from home equipment to juvenile merchandise, from {hardware} to mushy items. However the folks we design for stay the identical.”
For Chen, human-centered design just isn’t tied to any explicit product class. It’s a mind-set that connects know-how, manufacturing, enterprise, and on a regular basis life. As industries proceed to evolve, he believes the designers who perceive folks—not simply merchandise—will create the options that matter most.
