Industrial Design

Product & Business Development

Chapter Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Product Development Process and Organization
3. Opportunity Identification
4. Product Planning
5. Identifying Customer Needs
6. Product Specifications
7. Concept Generation
8. Concept Selection
9. Concept Testing
10. Product Architecture
11. Industrial Design
12. Design for Environment
13. Design for Manufacturing and Supply Chain
14. Prototyping
15. Robust Design
16. Patents and Intellectual Property
17. Service Design Product Design and Development
18. Product Development Economics Karl T. Ulrich, Steven D. Eppinger, Maria C. Yang
7th edition, McGraw-Hill, 2020.
19. Project Management

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What is Industrial Design?

Industrial Design (ID)

The practice of designing mass-produced consumer products with focus on product
aspects that relates to the users (user experience and aesthetic appeal)

All products that are used, operated, or seen by people depend critically on
ID for commercial success.

A few tenets of Industrial Design

A product design is not only about aesthetics, but also how a product functions, how it
is manufactured, what value and experience it provides for users.
(The Industrial Designers Society of America/IDSA)

Form follows function.

(Louis Henry Sullivan, an architect)

The most efficient machine is the one built around a person.

(Henry Dreyfuss, Industrial Designer)

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Why do we need Industrial Design?

Three Design Challenges

▪ Companies used to market their products on
the merits of its function alone.
▪ Industrial Design used to be an afterthought,
Business People only to style, or gift wrap a product after
technical features were determined.
“viable” “desirable”
▪ Nowadays, fierce competition makes it
unlikely that a company will enjoy a

v
sustainable competitive advantage through
Technical technology alone
▪ A product’s core technology in not enough
“feasible”
to ensure commercial success. Industrial
design is used to differentiate products and
satisfy customer needs

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How important is Industrial Design?
Expenditure for Industrial Design for some The range of expenditures on
Consumer & Industrial Products Industrial Design is tremendous

▪ For products with relatively little user

interaction such as some types of industrial
equipment, the cost of ID is considerably
lower
▪ The development of an intensely visual and
interactive product such as an automobile
requires higher investment in ID effort
▪ For a technically sophisticated product,
such as a new aircraft, the ID cost can be
insignificant. Other costs, such as
engineering cost, are much more dominant.
But ID cost could still reach millions of dollars.

The importance of Industrial Design

is different for different products

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Assessing the Importance of Industrial Design for a particular product
There are 2 dimensions that we can used to determine the importance of ID for a product

User Experience Needs Aesthetics Needs

How important is usability? Is visual product differentiation required?

How important is ease of maintenance?
How complex are the interactions
required for the product’s functions?
How familiar are the user interactions to
the user?
What are the safety issues?
How important are pride of ownership, image,
and style?
Will an aesthetically appealing product
motivate the team?

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https://youtu.be/Ha1z4juJbYc?si=hPLMBJTpMIfINPvN
6
Industrial Design Example

Philips Sonicare
Electric Toothbrush

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8
 Assessing the Importance of Industrial Design for Philips Sonicare
In terms of User Experience
Needs Level of Importance Explanation of Rating

Usability Though the ProtectiveClean toothbrush

incorporates sophisticated technology, it is critical
that users from children to the elderly with diverse
brushing styles be able to hold it comfortably and
easily access the buttons.

Ease of maintenance Hygiene products must be easy to clean and

maintain.
Familiarity of user interactions The primary user interaction is of brushing,
with a number of secondary interactions.

Complexity of user interactions The process of brushing teeth is well understood by

designers. A new button for the base model to control
multiple functions required a different user interaction.

Safety There were few safety issues for ID to consider on

the ProtectiveClean toothbrush. However, the safety
of using an electrical device near water had to be
clearly conveyed to users

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 Assessing the Importance of Industrial Design for Philips Sonicare
In terms of Aesthetics
Needs Level of Importance Explanation of Rating

Product differentiation Electric toothbrushes are a highly competitive

market. The product’s appearance was key in
differentiating it from others.
Pride of ownership, fashion, The ProtectiveClean toothbrush was designed to
or image be a premium product with broad enough appeal to
fit in in a wide variety of bathrooms. Its look and
feel had to be sophisticated and inviting. At the
same time, it had to maintain the Philips Sonicare
brand identity.

Team motivation A unifying goal of the globally dispersed

ProtectiveClean toothbrush design team was to
create a design that would appeal to a diverse set of
international users.

Both ergonomics and aesthetics were extremely important for the ProtectiveClean toothbrush.
Accordingly, ID did indeed play a large role in determining many of the product’s critical success factors.

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What is the Impact of Industrial Design?

Increased Product Appeal

Benefit of
✓ Price premium
Industrial

v
Greater customer satisfaction

v
✓ Increased market share
Design Additional or better features, strong brand
identity, and product differentiation.

Study by MIT – Assessing the impact of detail design decisions on product success factors
▪ There is a significant correlation between product aesthetics (as rated by practicing industrial designers) and
the retail price for each product, but no correlation between aesthetics and manufacturing cost.
▪ An increase in price of $1 per unit for typical sales volumes would be worth several million dollars in profits
over the life of these products.

Study by Open University – Impact of investing in Industrial Design

▪ Investing in industrial design consultants led to profits in over 90 percent of all implemented projects
▪ When comparisons were possible with previous, less ID-oriented products, sales increased by an
average of 41 percent.

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 Establishing Corporate Identity using Industrial Design
▪ Corporate identity is derived from “the visual style of an organization,” a factor that affects the firm’s
positioning in the market.
▪ A company’s identity emerges primarily through what people see: Advertising, logos, signage,
uniforms, buildings, packaging, and product designs
▪ Industrial design determines a product’s style, directly related to the public perception of the firm

Recognizable Quality Consistent Example:

products + reputation + image Apple and BMW

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 The Industrial Design Process

1 Investigation
customer needs
of
2 Conceptualization 3 Preliminary refinement

Coordination with
Further refinement & engineering,
4 final concept selection 5 Control drawings or models 6 manufacturing, and
external vendors

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The Industrial Design Process
1 2
Investigation of
Customer Needs
✓ The product development team
begins by documenting
customer needs.
✓ involvement of marketing,
engineering, and ID certainly leads
to a common, comprehensive
understanding of customer needs
✓ The ultimate goal for Industrial
Designer is to gain an intimate
understanding of the interactions
between the user and the
product.
Conceptualization
✓ Engineers focus on technical
solution, while industrial designer
concentrate on creating
product’s form and user
interface
✓ Simple sketches are used as a
fast and inexpensive medium to
convey ideas
✓ Concepts are grouped and
evaluated by the team according
to the customer needs,
technical feasibility, cost, and
manufacturing considerations. Concept sketches for
the Philips Sonicare
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The Industrial Design Process
3 4
Preliminary
Refinement
✓ industrial designers build models
of the most promising concepts
Soft models are typically made in full
scale using foam or foam-core board.
✓ Allow the development team to
express and visualize product
concepts in three dimensions.
✓ Concepts are evaluated by
industrial designers, engineers,
marketing personnel, and (at
times) potential customers
Further Refinement and
Final Concept Selection
✓ Switch from soft models and
sketches to hard models and
information-intensive drawings
known as renderings
✓ Renderings are often used for
color studies and for testing
customers’ reception.
✓ The final refinement step before
selecting a concept is to create
hard models
Hard model can cost thousands of
dollars
Rendering and hard
model of Philips Sonicare
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The Industrial Design Process
5 6
Control Drawings
or Models
✓ Control drawings or models
document functionality,
features, sizes, colors, surface
finishes, and key dimensions
✓ Usually given to engineering
team for detailed design of parts
✓ Can be used to fabricate final
design models and other
prototypes
Control Drawing and prototype
of Philips Sonicare
Coordination with
Engineering,
Manufacturing, and
External Vendors
✓ The industrial designers
must continue to work
closely with engineering
and manufacturing
personnel throughout the
subsequent product
development process
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 Management of the Industrial Design Process
▪ Industrial design is typically involved in the overall product development process during
several different phases.
▪ The timing of the ID effort depends upon the nature of the product being designed.

Technology-driven Products User-driven Products

▪ The product’s core benefit is based on its
technology, or its ability to accomplish a specific
technical task
▪ consumers will most likely purchase the product
primarily for its technical performance.
▪ Engineering effort will dominate design process
Example: Hard Disk Drive, Desktop Computers
▪ The core benefit of a user-driven product is derived from
the functionality of its interface and/or its aesthetic
appeal
▪ High degree of user interaction
▪ External appearance is often important to differentiate
the product and to create pride of ownership
▪ ID is more important than technical consideration
Example: Office chair, coffee maker

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 Management of the Industrial Design Process
Relative timing of the industrial design process for two types of products is different.
Product Development Process

Concept Development System Detail Design,

Concept Level Testing, & Production
Planning Identification of Concept
Generation & Design Refinement Ramp-up
Customer Needs Testing
Selection

Industrial Design Process

Technology-driven Product

User-driven Products

▪ The industrial design process is a subprocess of the product development process; it is parallel but not separate
▪ For technology-driven products, industrial design activities start much later
▪ For user-driven products, industrial design is involved much more fully, dominate overall product development

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Role of Industrial Design according to Product Type
Product Development
Technology Driven
Activity
Identification of ID typically has little involvement in the initial
Customer Needs technology development but will be brought in
later to help identify customer needs.
Concept Generation ID works with marketing and engineering to
and Selection ensure that human factors and user-interface
issues are addressed. Safety and maintenance
issues are often of primary importance.
Concept Testing ID helps engineering to create prototypes,
which are shown to customers for feedback.
System-Level Design ID typically has little involvement.
Detail Design, Testing, ID is responsible for packaging the
and Refinement product once most of the engineering
details have been addressed. ID receives
product specifications and constraints from
engineering and marketing.
User Driven
ID works closely with marketing to identify
customer needs. Industrial designers
participate in focus groups or one-on-one
customer interviews and observations.
ID generates multiple concepts
according to the industrial design
process flow described earlier.
ID leads in the creation of models to be
tested with customers by marketing.
ID narrows down the concepts and refines
the most promising approaches.
ID selects a final concept, then
coordinates with engineering,
manufacturing, and marketing to
finalize the design.
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 Assessing the Quality of Industrial Design
▪ Assessing the quality of ID for a finished product is an inherently subjective task.
▪ However, we can qualitatively determine whether ID has accomplished its goals by
considering each aspect of the product that is influenced by ID.

Ability to Maintain and

Usability
This is a rating of how easy the product is to
use, and is related to the product’s
appearance, feel, and modes of interaction.
Emotional Appeal
This is a rating of the overall consumer appeal
of the product. Appeal is achieved in part
through appearance, feel, sound, and smell.
Repair the Product
This is a rating of the ease of product
maintenance and repair. Maintenance
and repair should be considered along
with the other user interactions.

• Do the features of the product effectively • Is the product attractive? Is it exciting?

• Does the product express quality? • Is the maintenance of the product
communicate their operation to the user?
• obvious? Is it easy?
• Is the product’s use intuitive? What images come to mind when viewing it?
• • Do product features effectively
• Are all features safe? Does the product inspire pride of ownership?
• communicate disassembly and
• Have all potential users and uses of the Does the product evoke feelings of pride among
product been considered? the development team and sales staff? assembly procedures?

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 Assessing the Quality of Industrial Design
Appropriate Use of Resources
This is a rating of how well resources were used in satisfying the
customer needs. A poorly designed product, one with unnecessary
features, or a product made from an exotic material will affect
tooling, manufacturing processes, assembly processes, and the
like. This category asks whether these investments were well spent.
▪ How well were resources used to satisfy the customer requirements?
▪ Is the material selection appropriate (in terms of cost and quality)?
▪ Is the product over- or underdesigned (does it have features that are
unnecessary or neglected)?
▪ Were environmental/ecological factors considered?
Product Differentiation
This is a rating of a product’s uniqueness and consistency
with the corporate identity. This differentiation arises
predominantly from appearance.
▪ Will a customer who sees the product in a store be able to
identify it because of its appearance?
▪ Will it be remembered by a consumer who has seen it in an
advertisement?
▪ Will it be recognized when seen on the street?
▪ Does the product fit with or enhance the corporate identity?
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Thank You

Product & Business Development

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