Apprehending Kawaii for industrial design theory

Kawaii and notions of 'cute' are influencing an emerging and tacit form of integration of Asian material-culture concepts within Australian industrial design practice and education. Yet the origins, meanings and values of kawaii are largely unknown outside of Asian cultural studies and Japanese design practice. While dominated by Japanese design, new centres of Kawaii-esque cultural and commercial production and consumption such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Taiwan are developing and consequently new approaches to Asian cute are evolving. Such a shift in aesthetic sensibilities and orientations to rapidly bifurcating consumer markets presents a potential rupture in traditional industrial design discourses, visual and material techniques and strategies for value attachment to products. This paper examines literature around kawaii in order to contextualise kawaii culture and products for the purposes of the kinds design analysis that is common inside industrial design. Centred on defining the drivers of kawaii from a socio-cultural design analysis process a thick description of kawaii for design is presented as a means of apprehending this particular discourse of cute. An analysis of the elements of kawaii that are useful in the product development processes of industrial design are drawn from, and discussed with, reference to literature and examples in the field. The authors argue the need to commence a theorizing of kawaii for design as it migrates from a largely Japanese phenomenon to a truly global language of material culture and mode of design practice.