Industrial design is a subset of product design. Industrial design is associated with end-user tasks, product branding, appearance, and ergonomics. It focuses on the esoteric aspect of every product. All the industrial design colleges lean towards engineering aspects and concentrate on teaching how to develop a highly functional design with the best style and appearance. In contrast, product design encompasses every discipline used to develop a product. Therefore, it is possible to develop products without industrial design, but no products can be manufactured without product design. The article below shows the significant difference between product and industrial design.
Industrial design is great for young artisans and craftsmen looking for a career in the commercial sector. Industrial design colleges include basic mechanics and materials science in their curriculum and make students acquire a skill that concentrates on the product’s functions versus the end-user. Apart from the technical curriculum, designers are taught a unique approach to design products. The best way to explain this will be: An industrial designer designing a product will consider the balance, weight, overall size, features, power feature, and storage capacity. When looking into these design aspects, it becomes easy for the designer to produce designs based on priority. It helps them to include alternatives for specific parts or features of the product. On the contrary, a product designer will consider additional parameters like the product cost, manufacturing materials, drop test performances, and regulatory and safety requirements. This clearly proves that a product designer is responsible for the entire product and complies with financial, marketing, and marketing needs.
An industrial design is a part of the product development program for product branding and differentiation processes. Manufacturers design products with style and aesthetics to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This strategy works great for highly functional devices to gain a distinctive market presence. However, the marketplace becomes saturated with many competitors, because of which the prices of the products drop, and profits also become meager. Industrial designers end up reinventing fresh designs with new technologies and materials. Industrial design colleges in Chennai train the designers to create products by considering both the market and the user. But one must understand that industrial designers need not include all the technical aspects based on engineering and manufacturing concepts. This influences the objectives and priorities of industrial designers, which is entirely different from engineers who focus on product functioning. Thus, a product’s success is possible with both product and industrial design professions’ synergy.
Product design is more complicated than industrial design, and there are a few fields that blend and overlap between the product and industrial design for specific products. Industrial design colleges with decades of experience make this point clear to their students to make them understand where both the fields merge and work together. Designers with electrical and software engineering experience can design a product from concept to production. However exceptional their work might be, these individuals are very rare. They develop less complicated products like lighting, furniture, and dinnerware. In comparison, electronic devices like digital cameras, medical devices, and mobile phones need a special team of programmers, engineers, and scientists to develop the product successfully.
Product design is an inclusive result of engineering disciplines and basic design. It includes the resources required for designing an entirely functional product that looks appealing, safe to use, highly reliable, and cost-effective. The complexity, expertise, cost of development, and range of disciplines depend entirely on the product. Great designs are produced with the integration of engineering and art throughout the entire designing process without boundaries.
Product design is mostly based on a long list of specifications and technologies. The primary technology may include chemical assays, sophisticated optics, motion controls, and software. Thus, in most situations, the products include the structure to support and an attractive enclosure for its internal components. On the other hand, industrial design colleges train candidates to focus on the external components’ user interface and product embodiments. In a product design, a fully integrated project is planned based on the development team comprised of talented individuals. They work effectively without any political agenda and concentrate on achieving quality solutions. A successful product design is elegant, beautifully detailed, and minimalistic. The attention to detail is why product designing yields reliable revered classics.
Well-established industrial design colleges in Chennai teach candidates the push-pull effect of industrial and product design to make them understand the correlation between them. The industrial design solutions are based on materials, manufacturing processes, and technology-driven resources. The user interface, size, and appearance of products have experienced a significant change in the past few years. These relate to the technological trends with every product development. A classic example to understand the push-pull effect will be through analysis of the changes in television and phone. Approximately forty years ago, industrial designers tried to minimize the display screen or monitor bulkiness. But designers could not devise a non-bulky monitor until the prices dropped and the performances improved. This proves the pull of industrial design through technological factors associated with product design. The product design is pushed by industrial design and can be demonstrated with the apple phone. This brand has pushed the technology’s limits to develop a specific look for its product. Thus, in every product, the vision created by industrial designers impacted the engineering team, thereby influencing them to use new technologies to attain the desired aesthetics.
Footnote
All the differences between industrial and product design must be evident by now. An industrial design represents the critical phase during product development, and industrial designers impart features in a design that engineers overlook. Product designs improve only when talented industrial designers contribute their insights to development. Their contributions are realized through increased profits, improved sales, higher customer satisfaction, and escalated market share. DOT School of Design is a premium design college in Chennai that includes the differences and similarities between industrial and product design in its course curriculum to enhance designers’ development.
