This coming Sunday will mark exactly one year since SK Magic, a home appliance company, declared its transformation into SK Intellix, an artificial intelligence (AI) wellness platform company. It was not simply a name change, but a major shift that altered both the company's core business and management philosophy. Throughout this transformation, SK Intellix paid particular attention to one area: design. To this end, the company also established a design center early this year. The aim was to first define a long-term sustainable design philosophy.
"Establishing the design center was intended to elevate the company's competitiveness to the next level," Kim Eun-young (pictured), Head of the SK Intellix Design Center, said in an interview with Seoul Economic Daily on Friday. "The biggest change is that we now have a system in which planning and design create products together from the very beginning."
Kim was in charge of product design and branding at Samsung Electronics and Motorola in the United States. She later served as a professor at Hongik University, where she founded the design lab "Heytate" and led robotics design research and the development of high-tech products. "I will apply the design-led product development approach I built in the robotics field to SK Intellix's business," she said.
The design center's top priority is to plan future user experiences, products, and services around the new brand NAMUHX. "Existing home appliances are centered on improving already-completed products, but robotics is a field where you have to create entirely new product forms that did not exist in the world," Kim said. "Since there is no standardized form, creative thinking will determine a product's direction and competitiveness."
She believes that in the AI era, experience design that naturally weaves technology into daily life becomes even more important. "Technology provides functions, but what ultimately makes consumers choose a product and use it for a long time is design," Kim explained. "Through product form and materials, user experience, and interaction, we must turn advanced technology into products that anyone can use easily." She added, "Design is not just about making good-looking products, but plays the role of connecting technology to the user's life."
The design center oversees not only NAMUHX but also the product planning and design of existing SK Magic products. The plan is to propose a new AI smart home experience while upgrading existing appliances, giving both brands a consistent design direction.
"Our goal is to bind planning and design into a single process to raise product competitiveness at the company-wide level," Kim said. "We will present a new standard for the smart home that provides a differentiated user experience in the AI era."
