what is industrial design?? what is its evolution?what are the importance of industrial design?

Answer 1

I've studied Industrial design, which is, as said, another name for product design, which is basically the design of any product around you.
industrial designer can design anything and everything: cars, furniture, household stuff, electronic stuff etc... it is a very wide field.
without industrial design, we'd be still washing our clothes in a bucket basically....

Answer 2

I have a bachelor's in Industrial Design.

It's just another name for product design. Cutlery, Electronics, sneakers, handbags, automobiles, furniture, you name it!

Check out the following sites to get more info:

Answer 3

A typical design process applied to a product devel-opment might include consideration of thousands ofissues associated with cost, assembly, appearance,usability, manufacture, sustainability, export, competi-tiveness, standards and patents, among many others.Little wonder that it takes a considerable period for adesigner to develop the expertise that facilitates theintegration of issues and associated decision making.The designer essentially manages the process ofdesign and effects the role of both designer andmanager. Management aspects include the context ofthe product, client requirements, the validity of the brief,plus time and cost issues. The designing aspects canrange from broad concepts to the clarification ofdetails. Tasks can include issues associated withpatent and design registrations, engineering, manufac-ture and assembly, competitors’ products, disposal, anda host of both minor and major considerations.A number of designers and writers have writtenabout designing and unanimously refer to the com-plexity of the process and the difficulty associated withmany problems that are ill-defined. Talbot argues thefollowing:Industrial designers create objects thatoccupy space and have plastic and visualform. The process of design that theyemploy involves creativity, the resolutionof complex issues and synthesis. Otherprofessions such as analysts, critics,accountants or managers employ synthe-sis to resolve issues but their work is notnecessarily creative and new. In contrastdesigners put things together and bringnew things into being, dealing in theprocess with many variable and con-straints some initially known and othersrevealed during the design process .The outcomes of the design process never evolveto one unique and correct answer; it is this single factthat makes the learning difficult because the answersthat might apply are legion. One answer might be moreappropriate than another and it is the role of design tobalance the conflicting requirements and arrive at anappropriate solution. Schon stated the following:Designers juggle variables, reconcileconflicting values and maneuver aroundconstraints - a process in which, althoughsome design outcomes are superior to othersthere are no unique right answers [2].An industrial design project may include responsi-bility for the design of the user interface and productfunction and emotive aspects, such as productappeal (visual, tactile and style), together withperceived quality and value. In addition, the designerhas to work with materials and structures that musthave appropriate engineering properties and be manu-factured, assembled, distributed, maintained, used andresponsibly disposed of. Industrial design problems thusinvolve dealing with a very large number of constraintsto meet goals that may not be clearly defined. Suchdesign problems are usually ill defined (as opposed towell-defined problems that can be solved using wellunderstood procedures and have clearly identifiable,correct solutions).The designer generally follows an established proc-ess. While approaches vary, the product developmentprocess (PDP) can be used to describe the way inwhich the designer moves though the project. Thestages in this process are as follows:•Product planning;•Task verification;•Conceptualisation;•Embodiment;•Detailed design;•Communication;•Preparation for production.The designer will move through the stages of theprocess, not necessarily in a sequential manner, andmay iterate between the stages refining the stage out-comes until the optimum result is achieved. Forexample, when involved in the product planningstage, the designer may seek information in the prepa-ration for production stage regarding manufactur-ing cost and facilities for production. Similarly, whenpreparing detail designs, the designer may go back tothe task verification stage to verify the considera-tions outlined in the brief.The graduate designer usually gains employmentin an industrial design consultancy where engagementin projects, ranging from the design of toothbrushes

The Importance of Design Methods...177right across the spectrum of products to motorvehicles, facilitates the building of a foundation ofexperience. The novice designer, starting from anelementary understanding of design gained at univer-sity, will then engage in projects under the watchfuleye of an experienced designer. The novice quicklyconsolidates understanding of design and inexorablygains experience in countless issues associated withmaterials, manufacture, engineering, marketing,sustainability, recycling, legislation, standards, patents,specifications, costing, prototyping, communication andproject management. Thus, the novice designer willproceed to an experienced designer over a period ofperhaps 10 years.In moving through the stages of the product-devel-opment process, the designer will employ certainprocedures and tools to arrive at effective stageoutcomes. In the product planning stage, thedesigner may carry out analysis of the features ofcompetitor products. This might be done employing aformal features analysis method or may employ abenchmarking method. Similarly, in the task verifi-cation stage, the designer may employ objectivestrees or morphological analysis. However, experi-enced designers do not necessarily employ formalmethods. In many instances, their experience enablesthem to make a considerable number of mental itera-tions that may reflect upon, for example, competitorproduct features and arrive at conclusions that areuncannily accurate and conclusive.Eder, writing about engineering designers, explainedthat certain methods are accepted by industry,examples include Total Quality Management (TQM),Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Taguchi [5].He further laments that such methodologies are usedonly in a small fraction of industry. Frostresponded to Eders’ comments by arguing that muchdesign in industry is incremental and not original and,therefore, not requiring methodological approaches [6].Maffin considered the low use of methods in industryand argued that much design in industry is non-originaland that design is based on established concepts anddoes not require elaborate exploration [7].These comments by engineering academics applyequally to the field of industrial design. While experi-enced designers may not formally employ a particulardesign method, they nonetheless go through a processthat informally lists and considers many issues clari-fied by formal methods. For example, many designersemploy brainstorming techniques but do notnecessarily include Osborne’s idea-generation tech-niques. Nor do they necessarily establish a brainstorm-ing committee. This capacity to design and informallyapply methods to arrive at outcomes is something thatcomes with experience and it might be argued thatexperienced designers do not need to broadly use de-sign methods.DESIGN METHODS: THE CURRENTSITUATIONDesign methodology includes the study of the princi-ples, practices and procedures of design. Its primaryfocus is to develop a deep and practical understand-ing of the design process and how this process can bemodified, made more effective and transparent andbe managed to achieve sustainable design outcomes.Design methodologies evolved from the introduc-tion of new systematic design methods that were firstintroduced in the 1960s. Those methods were appliedin certain fields of design practice and these includedengineering, industrial, architectural and urban design.During the same period, the techniques of creative engi-neering and brainstorming became more widespread andthese provided some bases for idea generation. Some ofthe early methods did not work very well in practice;they were cumbersome to apply and required consider-able input data and paperwork. For these reasons, de-signers did not embrace those methods and believed thatthey constrained the design process [8].The design methods introduced in the 1960s and1970s drew attention to the need for design to be moretransparent and more substantially based on a struc-ture of analysis. However, the methods introducedfailed to achieve wide acceptance as part of the nor-mal process of designing and were not incorporatedinto the teaching of design on a significant scale. Othermethods either existed or evolved and were univer-sally accepted, such as design-by-drawing, brainstorm-ing, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and modelling,and these were included in the teaching of design.A number of methods were introduced, includingquality function deployment (QFD), value analysis(VA) and design for X (DFX). Although these wereadopted by certain sections of industry, the adoptionby the design industry was generally minimal. Variousauthors have written about the low level of adoptionby industry of the aforementioned methods. Huangand Mak refer to other reports by Wright (1996), Norell(1993), McQuater (1996), Dale and Shaw (1990), andPandey and Clausing (1991), and the general conclu-sions point to a low incidence of usage in industry [9].One reason advanced for the limited use of method-ologies was that formal design tools have notbeen taught widely at colleges and universities in thepast

L.N. Green & E. Bonollo178Designers do not make use of simple toolssuch as Pareto analysis, cause and effect,control charts and checksheets and suchare perceived by design staff as contrib-uting little to the design and developmentprocess and are viewed almost with disdain.There is even reluctance to utilise thosetechniques that have direct application todesign such as QFD, design of experi-ments, fault tree analysis and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) .Thus, design methods are seen as somethingoutside the design process, additional and optional.Designers come to learn of design tools through short-course training. However, the problem arises thatdesigners cannot readily include these tools in thedesign process because it is difficult to change estab-lished and proven techniques of design. Many of thesetools and methods require significant input data andpaperwork and, as a result, they are time-consuming.Since most design is engaged under the pressure ofdeadlines, it is difficult to introduce new ways underthese circumstances .In summary, it may be argued that the experienceddesigner does not employ certain methodologiesbecause of the following:•The designer, over time, has developed a data-base of expertise that facilitates effective designdecision making;•Many methods are cumbersome, requiringsignificant input data and paperwork and, as aresult, are time consuming;•Formal design tools were not taught at universi-ties in the past and currently.It follows, then, that methods and processes arenot included in the curriculum of many university andcollege courses. Certainly, CAD and modelling iswidely taught, but methods like VA, QFD or FMEAare not widely adopted. In addition, the design andproduct development process is not formally taughtas a means of understanding the way design iscarried out. This leaves the student designer in aninvidious situation trying to do what he/she does notknow how to do, in order to get the sort of experiencethat will help him/her learn what designing is [2].A STRUCTURED SURVEYIn 2004, the writers initiated a survey of industrialdesign programmes in Australia, Singapore, the UK,Korea and New Zealand. The purpose was to deter-mine the effectiveness of various aspects of students’approaches and the methods they used as they progressthrough their final-year major projects. Large numbersof questions were posed firstly to understand thecapability of student designers in such areas as timemanagement, conceptualisation and idea generationskills, and secondly to understand the design methodsemployed by student designers.