Elephant Design: build your imaginary gadgets online

25 Jan 2007 Category: Arts & Crafts, Features, Internet, Japan, Products

Elephant Design: build your imaginary gadgets online

Glowing donut-shaped… WASHING MACHINE!? Design by Klein Dytham architecture.

I’m sure that you must all have fully indulged in the New Year’s winter sales in Japan… As there are lots of products waiting for the happy shopper, it is often kind of hard to tell what you really want, isn’t it? I simply wish I could make my own product!!? is what you might think. In this case, Elephant Design is actually the company that can make that happen. They gather ideas from consumers online and allow designers to join in later to materialize these ideas into designed objects. In case there are enough online supporters (i.e. potential customers) for a particular design, then it’s put up for sale via manufacturers.

This process doesn’t seem to be all that surprising when you come to think about our densely customized environments, but its products surely do. Named CUUSOO SEIKATSU, meaning ‘imagination-life’ in direct translation, this company has produced some of the most imaginative designs and products. PingMag visited their office at the TOKYO DESIGN CENTER and talked to CEO and founder Kohei Nishiyama and Hiroshi Tanioka.

Written by Kaori Nishida


A smiling CEO/founder Kohei Nishiyama – in the background you can see what used to be a black door - now it’s a recycled chalk board.

Mister Nishiyama, how did you come up with this special online service called CUUSOO SEIKATSU?

Nishiyama: Well, if you go to manufacturers and say ‘I want this kind of product, could you make one?’ they wouldn’t do it unless it’s profitable, right. What we see in the stores now are millions of products that are profitable in the eyes of the manufacturers - but usually these objects aren’t a hundred per cent of what the consumers would have wanted initially. Thus, they often end up in an eco-unfriendly cycle: dead inventories keep piling up, a purchased product is too easily disposed for buying yet another replacement, and the overall garbage continues to increase.

However, using the internet makes it possible to know what sort of things people are really looking for, and how many people would actually want to buy them. No excess and no wastes. And we know it works.

It will be 10 years next year since Elephant Design has been established. As our many supporters we have now about 20 000 user members and 1 200 registered designers. Also, some conscious and understanding manufacturers have joined our service to support us with the merchandising. This is very encouraging.

How clever: grab the Portable Light by its handle and take it anywhere you like - cordless.

If you want to love a product, it certainly has to be well designed. That’s why every product generated with CUUSOO is an amalgam of desired functionalities. However, it’s not just about functionality but very strongly about design aesthetics, too. For example, the fashionable portable light from MUJI is quite familiar to Japanese. This one was developed in the online community MUJINET by using the same system as Elephant Design. With Jun Maekawa as the designer, this portable light gathered so much attention once it was introduced online, that it was put to super high speed merchandizing and was available in less than three weeks.


Not just a teddy - it’s a remote control!

Design sketches. How sweet.

With CUUSOO there are so many open-minded designs. The little teddy in the size of a palm is actually a remote control. How cute! You can control the channels with his right arm, and the volume control with his left. Then you twist its head to switch it On and Off… How nice!


Wall Type Remote Controller: a white plate with dimples.

You can actually sit on this Deluxe Washing Machine.

In the process, a remote control could develop into any form. But this time it became a white plate the size of a palm, too. You elegantly press the dimples on its surface with your finger to turn it On or Off. Named Wall Type Remote Controller, it will soon be released on the market.

Another product that went through the CUUSOO channel is an object by Klein Dytham Architecture: its shocking form totally contradicts your concept of what a washing machine usually looks like! This special washing machine glows while T-shirts and socks go round in the whirlpool. Moreover, because it’s made of soft rubber and thus supposedly comfortable, you can sit on it, feeling its vibration as if you were on a massage chair! Unfortunately this astonishing design is still waiting to be merchandised…

COMPACT IH: This is a cooking heater. If you put it vertically, you can use it as a bookend… if you like.

Your cooking heater COMPACT IH, also developed with CUUSOO and designed by Klein Dytham Architecture, won the 2006 Good Design Award…

Nishiyama: Yes, we’re so grateful. I heard that IH heaters are quite common in Italy. When I asked Astrid Klein who is from Italy and a mother, I was quite certain that she would bring in the best design ideas: down to earth, yet something with a touch of humour.

You must know that the electric hot plates like those we usually have in Japan, are big, take efforts to clean and spaces to store. So good ideas stem directly from the daily inconveniences you encounter. Just like the best medicines are invented by doctors who fell ill, the ideas that come from daily life get the most support from customers.


Couch occupied by toys and cuddlies.

It’s no problem at all if kids want to play ‘with’ the sofa, like with this TETRIS SOFA.

That also says a lot about the importance of gathering the common web-user’s voice in the CUUSOO SEIKATSU process, rather than gathering solely comments of famous designers.

Nishiyama: It’s not only designers who create the new products. I guess just about everyone has created something in his or her life, like for example a bin holder made out of clothes hangers. We never dared to make it public, but it fulfills the needs perfectly. We even created a new term for those people: the Frankensteiners as an analogy to Victor Frankenstein, the doctor who created that monster.

Thinking it would be nice to have something that you don’t have, Frankensteiners simply make the mock-ups. We regard their comments as precious, and we put a lot of effort on including their say in the CUUSOO system.


CUUSOO BAGS Pt I: drawers coming out of a backpack – so you won’t loose things no longer…

CUUSOO BAGS Pt II: pull it out… and the coils unfold in the bag. You no longer have to look for keys in it but see them already from above.

CUUSOO BAGS Pt III: the ultimate compact form of a bag. Fold it and carry it around on a key holder.

CUUSOO BAGS Pt IV: just like the Japanese wrapping cloth, it is multi-compatible to any luggage shape.

There’s another interesting project running on the CUUSOO website: The page is titled CUUSOO KABAN, meaning ‘imagination-bags’. Here, students and designers are throwing out not just their ideas, but their actual designs, too.

Nishiyama: Even today product designing processes have been kept secret until the very last minute of their release. Like renowned MIT professor Eric von Hippel wrote in his book titled Democratizing Innovation. I think that in a society where people can easily communicate with a vast number of other persons, ideas are no longer something to be kept secret. But they are rather something to be shared to inspire each other and to develop them further.

Table chair: parents and kids sit together and meet on eye level.

Mister Tanioka guided PingMag through many CUUSOO designs.

Apart from the CUUSOO BAG project, there are some student designs that have been put forward as product proposals.

Tanioka: Yes. For example, this table chair OYAKO-TABLE for one parent and one child is integrated into a beautiful form. It was designed by Shiho Nishizawa, a student at Musashino Art University. Mister Nishiyama came across this mock-up at the Tokyo Design Week last year, and made her contribute into CUUSOO. In fact, we have received many supportive comments online for this mock-up.

So, you don’t have to be an experienced professional designer to truly understand people’s needs. It’s the common users that know already what they want!

On the Elephant Design’s New Year card was the phrase HAPPY – TALK – YEAR. Little ideas in each person’s imagination grow by sharing it with others, and this can make the little imagination come true in real life. Elephant Design is a company that links such people and ideas. (And sorry, but there will be an English CUUSOO site available sometime this year. This should enhance the global talks a little further!)

Thank you so much, Mister Nishiyama and Mister Tanioka. I look forward to seeing more and more imagination come true!

54 Comments

  1. Cool article. Amazing designs! I particularly find the teddy bear interesting. “Then you twist its head to switch it On and Off.” I want one!

    Posted by: Ben on January 26th, 2007 at 3:26 am

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  3. Wow. Japanese are very creative.

    Posted by: Kj on January 26th, 2007 at 7:28 pm

  4. [...] ¿¡Una LAVADORA con forma de rosquilla brillante!? es solo un concepto pero cómo mola.. y te puedes sentar encima!  Diseño por Klein Dytham arquitectura Via: Ping Magazine Share and Enjoy: [...]

    Posted by: A Bit of MIX » Archivo del Blog » Glowing donut-shaped washing machine on February 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am

  5. [...] ¿¡Una LAVADORA con forma de rosquilla brillante!? es solo un concepto pero cómo mola.. y te puedes sentar encima!  Diseño por Klein Dytham arquitectura Via: Ping Magazine Share and Enjoy: [...]

    Posted by: A Bit of MIX » Archivo del Blog » Glowing donut-shaped washing machine on February 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am

  6. That tetris sofa has lots of cracks to lose change in! ;)

    Posted by: Jason on February 4th, 2007 at 5:36 am

  7. cool! i’d like to have that kind of washing machine in the future! =D

    Posted by: chocomerry on February 10th, 2007 at 3:37 pm

  8. [...] PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Elephant Desig… [...]

    Posted by: Ponoko - Personal Factories » Blog Archive » Imagination Life: Building products from your imagination on March 9th, 2007 at 5:22 pm

  9. This is so cool! I can’t wait for the English version!

    Posted by: Kristine on May 2nd, 2007 at 1:38 am

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  11. the teddy remote is actually amazing!!

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