Online Product Design Education: Exploring Industrial Design
Industrial design is one of the broadest professions there is because we design anything, from small housewares, to transportation, to exhibits. I designed this product development course to mirror the design process. It starts with an exploration of the field and what kind of opportunities there are.
The next step is where you start sketching. We’re going to sketch out more what the industrial design profession does. And we’re going to show you how designers sketch in different media.
Industrial design is basically designing things, which humans have been doing ever since they got out of the cave. We pulled up a rock, and that was our first design.
The industrial design profession really started in the 1920s when we were called upon by the industry to design things for their machines so they could mass produce. That required us to create this new profession that was focused on manufacturing techniques and also about how to satisfy customers.
What’s great about industrial design is it’s really focused on user needs. What has happened over those last years is our tiny profession has become the dominant method of business nowadays. Everybody’s doing design thinking. They’re all focused on the user’s needs. And all the things that industrial designers invented now are the normal things that everyone uses.
The difference with what real industrial designers bring to the party, besides all that good stuff, is that we actually make real things.
The design process includes sketching up ideas. But by sketching, we mean actually sketching three dimensionally to make a mock up or something. So, the design process goes from trying to understand things, exploring what’s around, brainstorming ideas about how to solve the issues, or what opportunities we can find, taking those ideas, and refining them and trying to figure out how to make them into a real product.
Finally, we have to work with the factories and engineers to actually make the things. So, we get down to the nitty gritty of choosing which materials to use and what manufacturing processes are going to be used.
Then we even try and sell the product because we’ve been through the whole process. This product is our baby. We know where it’s good. We know when it’s bad. We know how to make people want that baby.
Basically, that’s the industrial design in a nutshell. In this module of product design, we call it “explore” because that’s the first phase of an industrial design project. What you do when you start exploring is you don’t know where you’re going. You have to start off with a blank slate.
We’re going to look at different ways you fill up that slate with information you didn’t know when you started out. But, at the end of this phase you’re going to have a good idea of what the project is about.
This is what a product design education course can offer you.
