What Is Industrial Design?
Industrial design is an important aspect of product planning and manufacturing. It encompasses the creative work involved in imagining, modelling, sketching, painting or creating 3D images of products that can be seen and touched. The goal is to make visually interesting and useful products for their users.
A new concept headphone we designed for a client.
So how do industrial designers develop products?
The process is iterative: there is no one correct way to design a product, however here are the steps industrial designers take to develop a product.
1. Research
The first step in developing a product is research. You need to know what people want before you start designing anything. What do they use? How often do they use it? Do they have any problems using it? Once you find out these things, you can begin to design something that would solve their problem.
There are 2 types of research, they are primary and secondary.
Primary research is in-house testing (testing by either yourself or a member of your team). This testing approach simulates the environment the product will be used and provided insight into how you think users will interact with your product.
Secondary research is external testing. This includes controlled/non-biased user testing where the outside world interacts with the product which gives a more natural interaction and better data for development.
2. Design
Once you know what people want, you can start thinking about how to make it easier for them to use. If you’re making a tool, think about how it could be improved. If you’re making furniture, think about how it can be made stronger or lighter.
3. Prototype
After you’ve designed something, you’ll need to test it. Make sure it works properly and if not, fix it.
There are a lot of ways to prototype your design. With 3d printing, you can quickly produce a physical representation of your product to understand how it looks and feels.
4. Production
Now that everything’s working correctly, you should get it manufactured. Manufacturers usually work with technical drawings and 3d models that you provide them. Another thing to consider is how much you want to produce. Production quantity affects the manufacturing process that would be suitable so its good to have an idea of whether this is a small run or mass manufacturing
5. Marketing
You now have a finished product, but you still need to market it. Think about how you can advertise it. Will you put ads in magazines? Put posters around town? Use social media?
Pro Tip: Companies like apple use CGI renders of their products to help them create marketing content before the product is released! A designer I feel does this incredibly well is Will Gibbons. Have a look at his reel below to get an idea of how product visualisations can be used.
In summary, product/industrial designers are inventors. They create visually appealing products with the user’s needs in mind and are a very good resource to turn your ideas into a reality.
Thank you for reading! Do you have a product idea you would like to discuss? Get in touch!
