Being in Asia i see no Asian design (other than copying the styling, form, colors of past products or antiques). 99% is useless pointless design highly influenced by western and Japanese design.
Not that western design demonstrates anything with depth and philosophy. It is highly styling and technology driven (not minor factors of course but i think not the most important ones) and oh, yes, human-centered-design (nice).
The big design movements of the past (Scandinavian design, Bauhaus, Italian design) were not just design movements. They were manifests deriving from changing societies. They had a very specific raison d’être.
Do you happen to see anything like this today? All this IDEO bs about human centered design / design for society blah bla blah is just taglines to promote / bs about their work and justify the money they ask. Just Communication… NO MANIFESTATION!
… being here i just realize that there is so much crap around… so much… Ah… my nightmare is visiting vendors who so proudly show products that i honestly believe offend the human kind.
Going back to the designers, i have the chance to collaborate with many young designers (or not thaaat young). What i found really fascinating was the fact that none of them was/is really rough-prototyping anything (God bless ProE), only pre-production cnc models, and that their only research/inspiration is coming from design blogs !! Other than this NOTHING…!