BAT Design Chief Says Users, Simplicity are Main Focus

Ken Kim, BAT’s design chief, is the first Korean to oversee the design process of all of BAT’s tobacco products, focusing on simplicity and the user experience, reports The Korea Herald.

“My priority when designing heating tobacco products was that the item should become one of the three products that consumers can carry with them all the time, along with a phone and wallet,” said Kim during an interview.

Kim said that with the latest product, Glo Hyper X2, he and his design team focused on the smallest details, like how consumers with different finger lengths could comfortably close the product’s iris shutter and the most convenient shape for switches used in iris shutters.

“I also held a lot of meetings with the engineers to best design products that have the size and width to fit comfortably in consumers’ hands,” Kim added. “As such, we put a lot of effort into researching how to best design our products. We wondered if consumers will actually take notice of such efforts but concluded that for their satisfaction, this was a duty we must complete.”

Kim highlighted the strengths of products with simple, refined designs. “Designs for a product is only complete when its function part has been fully supplemented,” said Kim.