Workplace reviews and discussion: 肆意設計有限公司

1. Good location.

2. Small design studios generally have high turnover (many former colleagues worked there for only a year), so you can meet many people.

3. Equipment such as laptops and software is provided at no personal expense.

1. The Taipei-based Si Yi Design and Tainan-based Tangcao Design currently share a website, but the two companies do not exchange employees. Therefore, do not mistakenly assume that Tangcao Design is Si Yi Design. At present, there are no Si Yi projects shown on the website. During the interview, it is recommended that you clarify what projects the company has taken on recently and the types of projects it has handled in recent years.

2. The company is located in an apartment near the Taipower Building, so it has a residential layout. Employees must clean the office, restroom, and kitchen themselves. For a period of time, employees cleaned voluntarily; sometimes the restroom was simply dirty and messy, with no one taking care of it.

3. Designers do not have opportunities to meet clients. Many projects require the boss to interpret the clients’ intentions, so there is no opportunity to learn business knowledge or how to communicate with customers.

4. Each designer is responsible for what they say and for their sketches, which is reasonable. However, when anything you say may later become something the boss asks about—whether you gave that information at the time and caused the project to go in the wrong direction, making you bear responsibility for the project—it can seem better not to discuss anything. The more you say, the more mistakes you may make, and more misunderstandings may arise. As a result, during my time there, I saw many projects in which no one expressed the truth, because once your viewpoint differed from the boss’s, it would be questioned, and you had to stand behind every word you said. In an environment where people are afraid to speak, it is impossible to foster creativity or innovation.

5. Because the industrial design industry for physical products has moved to mainland China, Southeast Asia, and other regions, Taiwan’s traditional industries have decreasing demand for product styling. Many small design studios face the need to transform, whether by expanding across fields, focusing on digital design, or adopting currently popular consulting models centered on design thinking and user-centered thinking; these are all common directions for transformation. In this company, newer fields such as design thinking and co-creation design currently have no established management processes or culture. Resources and know-how for user research have also not yet been established.