Author Archives: Dawen Huang Interior Design

The culture of violence

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Got up early and read 2 articles posted on CNN. First, An American student Michaela Cross encountered sexual harassment in India while she studied abroad. Second, an Australian young man Christopher Lane was shot to death by 3 bored teens in Oklahoma. While hearing people blamed Indian men and the 3 teens, many people failed to see the core of problems, one relates to sex, one relates to violence, Bingo! the powerful entertainment and gun businesses.

Spending nearly 2 decades of my life in the US, I realized more and more sex and violence appeared in the movies, on TV, video games, and in the lyrics of songs, and the materials used to be “R” rating 5 or 10 years ago now is “PG13”. Killing, shooting, chopping heads off, cutting people in pieces, topless, all nude scenes, sex scenes, girls and guys act stupid and slutty and all got rich and famous, you name it, we see them all. People are showered with sex and violence materials in daily life around the world and someone are cashing in for all these.

Powerful entertainment business and gun business always can use their money and power to make sure the law makers will never pass any law that will prevent people from obtaining firearms or rate the movies or shows filled with violent and sexual contents “R”, and the most intriguing part of American politics is that those powerful industries always can make people standing on their sides.
I remember when the congress tried to pass “Obamacare”, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries can make those people who will benefit the most from Obamacare turn their back on Obamacare, so I will not be surprised to hear someone’s loved one got killed by firearms and that very person who lost loved ones to gun violence will say “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” or to hear those whose loved ones fell victims of sex crimes saying we shouldn’t restrict the censorship because people can make their own decisions on what they can watch and what they can’t. Hey, there were more than 70% of population in the US supported invasion of Iraq even though we all know how it turned out, and do you think those 70% people will admit they were wrong today?!
I believe if America has tougher law on firearms, that Australian young man probably would have just been stabbed instead of shot which might have spared his life, and I also believe if the movie or TV program rating can be more restrict, violence against women would drastically decrease, and fewer people like Castro who abducted 3 young girls in Ohio would exist.

Choosing Interior Designers

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Throughout my interior design career, I found human brains are interesting. Many people probably have heard the blind people have more acute hearing because the brains compensate what is lack of. That theory seems to make sense for the interior designers I have met.
Usually the designers who are really creative, he/she usually are not a good sales, and the designers who are social are usually good sales but not so creative in terms of design. The designers who are good at computer drafting such as 3D Studio Max are usually good at construction detailing but not so good at conceptual development.
So, when you are hiring a designer, make sure what kind of quality for a designer you are looking for. If you are looking for a designer whose major task is developing design concept, you’d better looking for someone who is very good at free-hand sketch, and an introvert. If you are looking for someone who needs to constantly communicate with the clients and give presentation in order to sell your design service, you should find an extrovert who is very social. If you are looking for a person whose tasks are generating contract document, construction detailing and engineering, computer 3D rendering, you must find someone who is very tech oriented and analytical.
Is there any designer who has all 3 characteristics and all of them are pretty much equally good? Creative(artistic, introvert), Social(extrovert, talkative), and Analytical (good at construction and engineering)? Maybe you know someone but they are very few.

Working in the US as an interior designer

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People always think living and working in the US after graduating from college is normal, nothing special about it, but people should understand why the employers in the US were willing to hire a foreigner who needed a work visa but not an US citizen? Well, it’s simple, I was better than other interior designers who were US citizens.

A lesson of democracy from a hit Hollywood movie

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Chinese audiences laughed about the scenes in the movie “White House Down” showing the transferring of power with the nuclear weapon launching code from the president to vice president and to speaker of the House if the leader was dead or incapable of performing the tasks in the US. I think the Chinese people should stop laughing and think if the similar situation happened to your government, what kind of power transferring mechanism your government has in order to insure the power won’t fall into one crazy nut or fall into no one?? I think that is the lesson Chinese people can learn from this action packed movie. I give this movie a thumb up.

Culture Insensitive Interior Design

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There are lots of mediocre stuff going on in the interior design world, one example is to design a space with Oriental elements. One particular thing that disturbed me was seeing the cut-off Buddha’s head displayed on a stick. I studied European or American art and architecture history for a while and never saw designers displayed any chopped off Jesus Christ’s head on a stick. I personally think it is a very disrespectful practice and I do not think the designers who designed this kind of element fully understand the content of Asian culture which reflects what I just mentioned, mediocre.Culture InsensitiveMediocre Oriental Design

Smarter Designers Don’t Copy

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The designers in Asia usually copied American or European designers’ designs to make profits, and many Asians think they are smarter by doing this since they can make money quicker by saving time on research and design development, but is it really true?

American or European designers often enjoyed the profits from the patents, but for Asian designers who want to make profits without holding patents, they must work harder and faster in order to produce someone else’ products to make profits, so they often have the workers work overtime to pick up the production, as we all know, working overtime eventually kills the creativity, so Asian designers will never be creative enough to come up with any break-through invention so that American and European designers will always have the leading edge on innovation, and because the American and European designers are making profits from the patents, they do not need to work overtime to generate enough profits which allows them having more flexible time to think, invent, and come up with the next patented inventions to monopoly the markets.

American and European companies also can sue Asian companies for violating copy rights which will also divert the Asian companies’ resources and time from research to defending the lawsuits which will further damage Asian companies’ ability to innovate. If a design company’s design ability got fundamentally destroyed which will be like you are taking the heart out of a living person. Now, who is smart?

Sales, Sales, and Sales

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Throughout my design career, I have met many people from different companies, Audio/Visual companies, lighting design firms, general contractors, or kitchen companies, during the initial contact, I always met the people who sounded very knowledgeable, they always presented themselves with great knowledge and also very persuasive. Their sales and marketing skills were excellent and always made the impression that they are trustworthy and professional.

However, after working with some of the companies for a while, I started to realize some issues occurred such as the things were not coordinated or followed up properly, and when the clients and I questioned about the issues, they always showed the great skill to calm you down and ensure everything will be fine with sweet, smooth, and very diplomatic talks, and when the clients and I finally realized the issues were more serious and complained to the owners of the businesses, then all over the sudden, those talkative people just disappeared, instead, the real knowledgeable people started to show up at the job site to solve the issues, and when I asked them why we had never been told about all these problems earlier by those sweet talkers from their companies? they basically said “Oh! He/She was just a sales, so he/she would not have known all these!” What?! a sales? I was very serious here about the issues, and the whole time I had been talking to a sales?!

I had to admit I got fooled few times like that, the people from certain companies I had dealt with were actually sales, but they talked so smoothly, I mistakenly thought they were the actual engineers or technical people, but the funny thing was, those real technical people and engineers usually were the people with few words.

Lesson learned: those who talk the most usually the ones know the least. When I hire anyone from now on, not only I want to know the company owner or the front man but the people who will actually do the work. Sometimes when some businesses are well-known, it is not because they are really good at what they do but because they are good at marketing. We must overcome this blind spot when hiring any professional.

Open Office Design Promotes Creativity, Really?!

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When I read an article, “The modern workplace, introverts need not apply” about how open office design would actually decrease workers’ productivity, especially to those who are introverted, I was amazed and thought how come the open office design was so heavily promoted at the first place since most of creative people are introverts that many studies have shown?

Isn’t it possible that since most of the introverts usually passed on the role of leadership and avoided socializing or networking which were essential for establishing businesses so the introverts usually were not in the decision-making positions such as managers or business owners at the organizations? I think that is why introverts’ voices are always un-heard or ignored, and when the people who are in the decision-making positions said so, it’s a done deal.

Advice for American interior designers who want to work in China

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1. If you would like to work in China as an interior designer, first of all, you will need to know how to use multiple computer added drafting softwares, here are the 4 programs you must be able to use, yes, ALL 4 of them: AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and 3D Studio Max, and it will be a big plus if you can operate them super fast. Revit or SketchUp? sorry, they are not popular in China.

2. You do not need to be creative. Most of design companies in China encourage copying other people’s ideas because it is faster. Project pace in China is 10 times faster than in the US, they just do not have the time for the designers to generate design concepts of their own, so copying design ideas from magazines or other projects has become the norm. Also, if you show your employer a very unique design idea, your employer will most likely to ask you show him a photo of your design ideas. You might feel strange because how you can have an actual photo of your design ideas if it has not  been built unless you copied other people’s design ideas from design magazines? That is because many employers there also do not like to take the risk to build anything that no one else has ever built before because it will take too much time to figure out how to actually build it, so if you come up with a design idea that is like a pioneer, your idea will most likely to be turned down.

3. You must be able to endure long working hours. Working overtime without overtime pay is very common in China. Because the project pace is fast, designers are constantly working overtime during the weekdays, on weekends and National holidays. Do not be surprised if you are asked to work overnight to finish a project without sleeping constantly.

4. You must be able to accept lower salary. The income level in China is not as high as in the US, so your salary there will more likely to be lower, but you definitely will feel better since the cost of living in China is also lower (except those big coastal cities such as Shanghai or Guangzhou).

5. You need to adapt the society well. Air pollution, dirty streets, crowded subway, hazardous drinking water, poisonous food, cars run over red lights, cars do not yield to pedestrians and horn constantly, people spit, liter, urination in public, jay walking, cut in the lines….etc. If you can get over these things quickly, then your life in China will definitely be much happier.

Interior Design Company Cultural Differences

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Advice for the interior designers in China who would like to work in the US:

Working overtime voluntarily in Asia is often portrayed as the workers’ strong devotion and dedication to work hard for the companies while working overtime frequently is a sign of inefficiency in the US.

Most of American businesses are running based on 3 principles, Efficiency, Innovation, and Elimination of Competition, so every company policy was designed exactly for achieving these 3 goals. For instance, many people think American businesses do not like their employees to stay at work late or work overtime is because America has more stringent labor law and many American companies do not want to pay for the overtime pay. Well, yes, it might be part of the reason, but there are more to it.

1. Efficiency: First of all, the companies I had worked at in the US, none of them actually paid for the overtime pay, but how come none of my ex-employers ever asked me to work overtime? in fact, throughout my 14 year career in the US, I probably had worked overtime less than a week if you put all of my overtime hours together. American companies believe the longer you work, the less efficient you become, when people get tired, they have hard time to stay focus, and their pace will get slower but the chance of making mistakes will increase. American businesses expect you to work with 100% efficiency when you are at the office, if you are not performing at the top condition, you are just wasting time. That is why the US companies also do not like their sick employees to show up at work. Because they do not want a dizzy zombie-like person at work who probably will waste a lot of time on blowing his/her nose or rushing to the restroom every other minute and give the virus to other workers and make them sick and become ineffective. Basically you can just call in and tell the company you are not coming in to the office just because you do not feel like working today in the US, why? because American companies think if your mind is not here when you are working, you are not effective, you are wasting time here in the office. Many American businesses give their employees 5 sick/personal days in addition to the 2-week paid vacation days is exactly for that purpose. Now, for increasing the productivity, some companies are giving employees extra time to take a nap after lunch.

2. Innovation: Research also shows most of creative and innovative ideas happened when people were outside of offices during non working hours. So, American companies want their employees to enjoy their personal lives. They do not believe keeping employees at the office for longer working hours has any positive impact on being creative or innovative.

3. Elimination of Competition: Sung Zu’s The Art of War says The best way of defeating the enemy is to defeat the enemy without sending out a single troop. American businesses definitely follow this ancient principle from China. The best way to defeat your business competitors is not to compete with better products or services but not even let the competition happen at the first place. Many American tech companies often filed suits against their foreign competitors over the copy right issues to keep the competition out, and many products made by foreign competitors can not even be imported to the US market because of the violation of copy right. Endless lawsuits also weakened their business competitors’ ability to compete because their competitors had to spend more time and resources on defending themselves at the court but less on developing new technology. American businesses treat their employees not only as partners but also as competitors, prolonged working hours creates dissatisfaction towards the working environment which usually caused employees to quit their jobs and work for other companies or start out on their own, no matter what, these employees eventually will become the competitors directly or indirectly. Many states in the US requires commercial interior designers to have state issued licenses in order to practice, it is also another way to keep more competitions out.

Of course, high health insurance cost in the US is also a major factor that American businesses have to make their employees work very efficiently because keeping the numbers of full-time employees down will save money on the employees’ health insurance premiums, and they definitely do not want their employees to get sick all the time because of long working hours which will also drive up the employees’ health insurance costs.

So, if any of you have the opportunity to work in the US, do not think your employer will be happy and appreciative to see you or people working under you working overtime constantly because it will only make your employer think you have very poor time schedule or project management skills. The last thing you want your employer to think is you are not efficient or creative, and a competitor creator.