Q: Sounds like you had a lot of good experience practising design. What made you switch to academia?

A: What they say about the advertising life being hectic is true! Our working day ends normally around 10 PM and sometimes we would even stay back till 2 or 3 in the morning. I decided that moving into the academic world would allow me to spend more time with my family while still being able to practise design. 

I started off by lecturing part-time at UiTM and then going into full-time lecturing while running my own design consultancy company. In fact, I’d consider myself a practising academic. Although my company was headed by my nephew after I decided to pursue my PhD, I’m still the advisor and still have my foot in the design world.

Q: I heard that you recently proposed a research project to the Malaysian Design Council (MDC). Do share with us about this research and what inspired you to venture into it.

A: In 2019, I attended the Asian Design Sharing Conference and was slightly embarrassed that we didn’t have enough data regarding the design cultural competency in Malaysian product manufacturing and services. Even MDC acknowledged the lack of data! 

I used to evaluate and look at how the UK design council acted as a mediator between the industry and academic. During my time in the MDC, I noticed that missing gap which may be caused by the insufficient support by the management or government. Realising that no public university was offered to do this research, I took it as a personal initiative to lead this project. 

The project aims to collect data on how design is valued in putting forward a company’s brand as well as how designers in the industry put forward their practices. With targeted objectives, we want to determine how companies value design in promoting their products, how they put forward original brand manufacturing capabilities, and the design itself.

There are two instruments we use to measure this. One by targeting manufacturing sectors. Here we’ll get decision-makers more involved in research. The other instrument is meant for practitioners in the field. We’ll get designers across all disciplines to get very diverse data.

Q: What’s the significance of conducting this research?

A: This research is for the nation, for the country. It’s so that the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and MATRADE can have this kind of data to understand how design is embraced by companies and the challenges faced by practitioners in producing convincing designs for branding. This will support MDC and promote the country’s growth. 

To a certain degree, it puts our culture on the map as it showcases and promotes a Malaysian design outside of the Malaysian market. Our design and culture can also be embraced by all users for different products and appliances.

Q: What are some of the most memorable aspects of your current research project?

A: Bringing young researchers together to conduct this research. None of them are PhD students at the moment and they’ve never done a big-scale research during their Master’s. 

During this MCO, we used to meet every Thursday through Zoom and, now that the semester has started, every Friday morning. We’ve definitely bonded and I feel a great sense of commitment and discipline being together with them. 

There were many challenges that came about because of the MCO that we didn’t expect but we managed to overcome them together.

Q: What were the challenges you had to face with your team and how did you overcome them?

A: One of the main challenges faced while collecting the data was definitely sticking to the timeline that was set. Because of the MCO, getting our samples from participants based on our database was difficult. Most of the companies in our database provided default information instead of personal ones — think office number instead of mobile phone numbers. So, for the first 3 months, we faced much struggle getting through to our participants. Emails were bounced. Calls weren’t entertained. This was simply not their priority. It was frustrating because we had all instruments ready but no respondents.

Instead of sulking about not being able to collect our bigger data, we brainstormed and looked through our strategy again. Instead of starting with manufacturing, which was our first priority, we started with designers that we were already in contact with through the Advertising Association and also individuals in the creative industry, regardless whether they’re in interior or manufacturing companies. We even reached out to a bigger scope of our target audience through different online platforms like LinkedIn. 

This repositioning allowed us to reach a wide range of designers in the market. Although we didn’t get all our bigger data first, we managed to have everything in order at the end of the day.

Q: Finally, what’s your end goal for this research?

Other than contributing data to MITI, I hope that researchers would want to use the data for their own publication. I also hope that we’re able to highlight the data found in different conferences and webinars as well as sharing the knowledge gained with different organisations. Because of the rich data received, I’m also planning for us to have some publications based on this research.

Aside from the immediate goals, I also hope that, together with my team members, we’ll grow to be competent researchers and accurately analyse the data we have.