Malaysian Product Design Identity: Issues, Transformation, and Challenges

Abstract

This paper discusses the issues, transformation and challenges of creating a national product design identity in the context of multi-ethnic country. Generally, there is no evidence that the characteristics of product design identity can be generalized based on the agreement of multi-ethnic decision making. In the context of Malaysia, the main issue is about the identification of national identity for local product design. This led to the question that can we establish Malaysian product design identity using multi-ethnic preferences? By looking at the mutual agreement between all ethnic preferences before the formation of Malaysia, it is plausible to use a single dominant of culture and heritage influence from Malay ethnic because the privilege was clearly written in the Social Contract, Reid Commission and Malaysia’s Constitution. The transformation should in line with the sectors of education, research, industry, and government agency. The challenges as of today and future were to take a stand about uniformity of Malaysian product design identity and it should be acceptable for other ethnic group in Malaysia. In conclusion, we propose that more studies about Malay ethnic culture and heritage should be given in the perspective of semantic and syntactic interpretations.