Samsung’s design chief wants tech to feel more human

FastCompany: AI is redefining how products are both built and experienced, and Samsung is reimagining its place in the tech ecosystem. As Milan Design Week gets underway, Samsung’s president and chief design officer Mauro Porcini pulls back the curtain on the company’s new design manifesto, gets candid about their rivalry with Apple, and shares why a brand known for engineering dominance is now betting its future on something far harder to measure: how a product makes you feel. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response , hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian.

From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. As an Italian in American business, and as a designer working with businesspeople, you’ve always been a little bit of an outsider in some ways in the communities you’re in. Now, as you get to Seoul and you’re the first non-Korean president in Samsung’s history, how much of being an outsider is good or bad? And how do you impact the culture without alienating the people who built it?

This idea of being suspended between different worlds — I grew up in Italy, in the north of Italy, with parents from the south, at a moment in time in Italy when the south and the north were really divided. I would go around my neighborhood, and it was clear that I did not belong there. But then when I went to the south on vacation during the summer, I for sure did not belong there either. So already then, when I was a child, I lived in this gray area, suspended between different identities.

If you talk to the design world, often they’re like, “Well, but you’re a businessperson.” But then if you talk to the business world, they are totally like, “You are not one of us.” So you don’t belong there either. Often people are uncomfortable when they don’t have a specific label, when they don’t belong. The message I want to send, especially to the new generations of people who are trying to define their identity, is that often in those gray areas, you can design your own identity and be unique and original. Already, when I moved as an Italian to the United States, there were many things that I didn’t understand. They were alien to me.

They were weird to me, honestly. But you need to really analyze yourself, analyze the culture you’re facing, and understand what unique strengths you bring to the table. Here, it’s a culture that is very organized. There is this vision coming from the top, and then an army of people that can execute. If used in the right ways, it’s very powerful, because they are able to move really quickly. Obviously, I was called to bring in a vision that adds to the one the company already had in design. So I really spent the past year trying to understand the strengths of the company and how I can bring something different. I’m still in the middle of it.

I think you need to be very transparent about the fact that you will have missteps and make mistakes. But again, you also need to show as much as possible what you bring to the table. I’ve seen commentaries on LinkedIn from designers talking about your move to Samsung and kind of finding hope in it. I’m curious what that hope is referring to. Look, I was surprised by those comments too. Design in corporations is somehow struggling. The design community made huge promises in the first decade of this new millennium about the power of design thinking, and then in many instances, design thinking didn’t deliver.

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This article discusses a significant strategic shift in a major brand's approach to design, which could influence industry standards and practices, making it highly relevant for brand strategy professionals.