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.

What impacts one impacts us all when it comes to product design. Or as Martin Luther King said, “What affects one affects all of us.” Consciously or not, we’re often considering our shared experiences and evaluating the designer of product development. We think about who is on the design team and who is authoring these products that are making their way to market. Sometimes, we realize that essential products like medical devices, educational tools, technological programs, and the cars that we drive are not crafted by a team that is as diverse as it should be.

Let’s take America, for instance. Our nation is a very diverse country. It is referred to as “a melting pot” or “a salad.” A more contemporary term might be “a hot pot.” We have people coming to this country from different cultures, different races, different ethnicities, different nationalities, different religions, and different genders. Instead of insisting on a generic, one-size-fits-all product design, we should celebrate our differences and incorporate them into our design work.

When we think about how a product that is used by people from such diverse backgrounds we ask “how can it possibly be perfect for every individual? How can one product be satisfactory to someone who is very tall, someone who’s very short, to someone who is sighted, or someone who was born deaf?” To a person with neurological challenges, a common product design might be perceived very differently than by someone who’s considered to be highly functional in a conventional sense.

These variations and the way people live as well as their individual experiences suggest that product design education is truly intersectional and is influenced by many factors. A designer can make design decisions in a studio in the Midwest or in Philadelphia where I live, but they don’t know anything about those who live in South Texas and grew up on a ranch. How do they have meaningful conversations about a product? They don’t. We make a lot of assumptions about public perception of our goods and services.

With ethnographic research, we asked a few people some questions and gathered enough insights to enlighten our understanding. With relevant feedback, I can go and work on my idea. And what happens is that there’s a disconnect between the products that are made and the people who they serve. We end up with products that don’t work as well as they should. Building inclusivity into our design approach is the first step toward meeting diverse consumer needs. Online product design education can become the next step for those who want to enter this challenging but rewarding field.

“I’m always encouraging my students to aim for 100 ideas,” says Jamer Hunt. “You may think that there are only two or three good ideas for one single opportunity, but I say try for 100.”

When you start generating ideas, you often reach a point of frustration where you think there’s nothing else to think about. When you reach this point, you have to just keep moving forward.

“Just keep sketching,” encourages Jamer. “You have to keep iterating your ideas because eventually, you’ll reach ideas you didn’t know you had.”

Product Design

This is when things start getting exciting. This is when design really takes off. I like to refer to this as the unknown unknowns. These are the things that we don’t know we don’t know. This is the real magic of design. Most design falls under the unknown unknowns. For example, how can we take this vacuum cleaner and improve it by 3%? How do we take this experience on an airline and improve it by 3%?

Product Design Education

The unknown unknowns are those breakthrough ideas that really transform a way of designing into a way of creating new products. However, you don’t get there on your first, second, or third ideas. You have to push through to your 20th, your 30th, your 40th, and your 100th ideas. This is when you really put stress on your own sense of what you know. This is where you push yourself beyond your comfort zone into an area where the things in your head come forward. These are the things you aren’t prepared for and the things you don’t anticipate.

This is when the magic starts to happen.

“I think 3D modeling is a great tool,” says product development expert Nifemi Ogunro. “It’s great for when you’re trying to communicate an idea. It’s great when you’re trying to get precision.” This is because you can see exactly what 2 inches is going to look like or what a dowel is going to look like through a full form.

In school, you are taught to learn the inner components of 3D modeling programs. This is applicable if you are going into engineering or doing more electronics-related work. Nifemi Ogunro likes to tell people not to worry so much about not understanding specific programs and their nuances.

This is because when you are working, whether for yourself or with a company, your employer will potentially give you the option of what programs to use. You may also get to choose for yourself. Nifemi Ogunro found that she personally liked SolidWorks the most out of all the programs that she learned. “It’s very expensive,” she explains.

Right now, Nifemi Ogunro uses Fusion 360, which is a free alternative, perfect for online product design education. “There’s so much overlap with the programs,” she shares. But features such as simple extrusions or being able to learn how to cut different holes to show different parts are ones she thinks are really valuable for product design.

A particular type of research that UX design professionals typically do is called generative research. In this type of research, designers will often engage their end users to come up with UI ideas or solutions.

One thing you can do to practice generative research is to have each person you interview come up with their “perfect solution.” Draw it out with them. Ask them where the search bar should go or what the buttons on the screens should do.

Do not feel limited to what is actually possible. Have your testers dream big and imagine big. Ask them what they want to get to, what they would like to see, and what they would like to actually do. “The point of this is not necessarily to go out and design exactly that, but to understand, what the motivators are behind that, and to spark some ideas within yourself,” says UX design educator Daniel Holtzman.

The idea behind generative research is to co-create. Instead of thinking about what users need or listening to what they think they need, it is to sit down with them and ask them their biggest challenges. If you had a magic wand and could do anything, how would you solve their challenges? Ask them to draw this solution for you or build it from very simple prototyping materials.

Any UX workshop that you do with your users which involves the co-creation of a solution will be 100% more powerful. This is because your users have all the answers. “They know. They are there every day with their challenges in the settings that they are, in the cultures that they are,” states UI design professional Rinat Sherzer. Asking your users to help you design a solution will bring out ideas that you could never have thought of.

One of the most significant lessons that you should take away from your online UX design education is not to solve for someone, but to solve with them. Listen to the stories, then let them imagine a solution. Let them draw, act out, or prototype the solution. Through these responses, many new challenges will arise, and you will always get their perspective. You can then go and refine, iterate, and work with their prototypes. Getting users’ points of view and co-creating with them is priceless.

Prototyping is an essential part of our job, and it is not always what we all think about. Prototyping doesn’t necessarily require a machine or a 3D printer. I always tell my team that the first rapid prototyping machine they must use in their project is a printer. It is effective because you start designing on the screen, which can be very challenging. It’s a challenge because as soon as you get into CAD, you sometimes keep the notion of proportion, but you lose the notion of scale.

For example, I have had designers repeatedly create 3D printing. The day they take it out of the machine, they look at it and say, oh, my god, this is big! It is for such reasons that a simple print is actually a great way to prototype your project rapidly. As you get into your process and refine it, maybe you will decide to cut and form the shape. Based on the print you have done, maybe you get to a point where you’re going to 3D print. It means in particular situations, 3D printing can still be a necessity.

Usually, in 3D printing, you might prefer to keep it maybe not to the last stage but the later stage of the product development process. There is a good reason behind this claim. It’s when you have already refined your design quite a lot, and you’re nitpicking the proportion and specific detail. In this case, you really want to make sure that your surface transition is proper and so forth. These are some of the fundamentals everyone in product design education must learn. Also, it must include online product design education.

When I speak about 3D printing, that’s 3D printing in plastic. We also do 3D printing in metal, which is slightly different. It is different because we don’t need metal to evaluate or shape an interface. When we use 3D printing in metal, we use what we call DMLS. It is usually to print a production part, which makes it very expensive. In such cases, it becomes rare.

We have one line of products in which their production is of that approach, but they may all cost you almost as much as it costs. It’s a little bit specific and for a particular market, and it’s also interesting. Once you are comfortable with all the plastic 3D printing technologies that are available, making that last leap to print in production is not that difficult. It’s just one more step.

We want to shift the conversation away from design focused on an end product, and instead, design as a process that could be open to a wide variety of participants. Nowadays, we tend to call that approach participant design or co-design.

The designer doesn’t have all the good ideas. Design experts have some good ideas, but many people likewise have creative ideas. So, how do you use the product design process to leverage all of those people who might be interested? They might be stakeholders in this product development process and might be able to envision possibilities that you would never see.

Sometimes we don’t know the situation well enough or we’re just getting to understand it a bit. Some people with brilliant ideas come from a different cultural background or a different language experience or a different religious orientation. Individuals from varied perspectives can offer unique perspectives that contribute to product design education. Whatever the source, it seems that the more interesting and innovative ideas are incubated outside of our heads rather than internally.

For me, the starting point is getting to know a context, a situation, a community. That might come through interviews or book and Internet research. Sometimes creativity emerges through convening community groups or listening to those who express their needs and goals.

Let’s say you are designing a new vacuum cleaner. You may have a great idea for how it should work. But you may be able to come up with much better ideas if you talk to consumers who use vacuum cleaners all the time, either residentially or commercially. Internet surveys and questionnaires along with product reviews often provide information that can best be interpreted by online product design education.

Maybe cleaners in the hotel industry, for instance, are using a vacuum cleaner all day long, and they are the actual experts. One of the things that can be incredibly valuable is to reframe this source of insight and expertise.

We tend to think of experts as people with big credentials and fancy titles or certificates from great universities or from favored consultancies. But an 11-year-old girl who lives in a neighborhood where you may be managing a project who rides her bicycle around is an expert about her sphere of activity. She has learned things that someone with a Harvard degree is never going to know.

Similarly, a hotel employee who cleans rooms for a living is going to understand much more about the essential parts of a vacuum cleaner than an industrial designer who comes to that project brand new with a college degree.

So, how do we find those practical experts? Not the experts with great credentials but those with everyday experience? Let’s look to the people who use our products every day, who encounter the strengths and weaknesses during each use, and who deal with the frustrations of a product’s flaws or limitations each time they switch it on. They’re the ones who are going to offer helpful ideas and the truest knowledge of something you may not know much about.

One piece of UI design that people really don’t think about or talk about is spending. What is the budget? How are we going to get there? Entering into this, our client has a notion of where they’re going to go. Often, our clients engage us from what we’ll call an “experience blueprint” for a project that has yet to be defined. They have a high-level idea of understanding of what they think they need.

Online UX design education shows we go through a journey with the client. It’s essentially about discovery, vision, narrative, and creating what we’ll call a blueprint for opportunities. Now that can be digital. It could be physical. But it becomes a document, and it becomes the way forward in the UI design.

The Cost

Also in that document, we’re looking at what the cost implications are. Everyone wants digital in the built environment, but they don’t really understand the process and what you need to go through to make it authentic and relatable. So whether it’s a light touch or a heavy touch, we try to give the client a sense of the cost.

Cost doesn’t just include the physical hardware, but also the back end: the UX development process, the software, how the UI system is going to operate, how it self-refreshes, all of those things based on what we think is appropriate for the project and client.

There are a lot of moving parts, but that up-front work saves the client a lot of time and cost, if it’s done appropriately. A good brief is broken down into several buckets, the tactical elements of what’s required, so the client and the team have an understanding of the project’s scale, cost, audience, and intent.

The Vision

Often, briefs focus more on technical needs and detailing all sorts of UX design elements. However, there is part of the brief that’s more of the narrative of what we aspire to for the project. It details what the client’s aspirations are and how our UX design team can build on those aspirations. A client might have a big, global wish for something, but we have to balance that aspiration and the real-life elements together into a brief.

Personally for me, and as a firm, we want to have a narration around the project that gives it a sense of opportunity. It helps the client to see and focus on vision and not get caught up in some of the smaller parts of the process.

Choosing the right materials for projects really comes down to understanding the material performance criteria of any given product.

Material Performance Criteria Considerations

What is the context for the product? What is its usage? How long do you need it last? Is it going to be subject to regular cleanings as most things are today?

It all comes down to performance criteria. Without taking these areas into consideration, you might make critical design mistakes.

Other Product Material Considerations

Visual criteria and the size limitations of the materials, such as with sheet and casting materials, are additional considerations. For example, what kind of molding can your budget handle?

It’s a constant balancing act. We must consider the specific criteria of a brief and the visual effect we’re looking for and then solve the holistic problem by balancing those two things.

Product Design Education Opportunities

You can learn a lot more about product material performance criteria, visual criteria, size limitations and other product design and product development material considerations via an online product design education. By understanding these and other areas, you can increase your chance of successfully designing and developing products that people value.

CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship Management’. These software systems allow you to manage and grow the relationships that you have with your customers.
But how do you effectively use CRM? And how do you understand what type of CRM is correct for your business? There are many CRM platforms available. Many can do the same basic things, but some offer unique features.
Before selecting which platform to use, you must decide what it is you want to know in your business and know the size of your business. You need to understand what you want to get out of your customer database. Is it to understand how your customer’s behaviors converts to a purchase? Or is it that you just want to be able to regularly reach out and create client retention?
At the bare minimum, a CRM program should automatically be able to categorize your customer base, securely store their information, and give you reporting on their behaviors, whether it’s by spin decile or regional decile. Depending on the CRM program, you can go deeper and wider from there.
Ecommerce industry companies have started to use gaming industry CRM platforms. The reason for this is because in the gaming industry, the CRM platforms look at the behavior that a customer is doing on a website. This website interaction behavior can be useful information for ecommerce to convert more sales.
We are moving into a space where customers want to feel like they are in control. This is the concept of CMR, or ‘Customer Managed Relationship’. Businesses are now asking how they can give tools to the customers so that the customers feel like they are choosing how they engage with the brand, rather than forcing them into the way the brand wants them to engage. This can be hard, especially for luxury companies that are used to managing the whole customer experience.