Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business to its customers.
It is the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products. In a systematic approach, product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, turning them into tangible products. The product designer's role is to combine art, science, and technology to create new products that other people can use. Their evolving role has been facilitated by digital tools that now allow designers to communicate, visualize, and analyze ideas in a way that would have taken greater manpower in the past. Product design is sometimes confused with industrial design, and has recently become a broad term inclusive of service, software, and physical product design. Industrial design is concerned with bringing artistic form and usability, usually associated with craft design, together to mass produce goods.
Product design process
There are various product design processes and they are all focused on different aspects. The process shown below is "The Seven Universal Stages of Creative Problem-Solving," outlined by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnell. It helps designers formulate their product from ideas. This process is usually completed by a group of people, designers or field experts in the product they are creating, or specialists for a specific component of the product, such as engineers. The process focuses on figuring out what is required, brainstorming possible ideas, creating mock prototypes, and then generating the product. However, that is not the end of the process. At this point, product designers would still need to execute the idea, making it into an actual product and then evaluate its success by seeing if any improvements are necessary. The design process follows a guideline involving three main sections: Analysis Concept Synthesis The latter two sections are often revisited, depending on how often the design needs touch-ups, to improve or to better fit the criteria. This is a continuous loop, where feedback is the main component. To break it down even more, the seven stages specify how the process works. Analysis consists of two stages, concept is only one stage, and synthesis encompasses the other four.
Analysis
Accept Situation: Here, the designers decide on committing to the project and finding a solution to the problem. They pool their resources into figuring out how to solve the task most efficiently. Analyze:" In this stage, everyone in the team begins research. They gather general and specific materials which will help to figure out how their problem might be solved. This can range from statistics, questionnaires, and articles, among many other sources.
Concept
Define: This is where the key issue of the matter is defined. The conditions of the problem become objectives, and restraints on the situation become the parameters within which the new design must be constructed.
Synthesis
Ideate: The designers here brainstorm different ideas, solutions for their design problem. The ideal brainstorming session does not involve any bias or judgment, but instead builds on original ideas. Select: By now, the designers have narrowed down their ideas to a select few, which can be guaranteed successes and from there they can outline their plan to make the product. Implement: This is where the prototypes are built, the plan outlined in the previous step is realized and the product starts to become an actual object. Evaluate: In the last stage, the product is tested, and from there, improvements are made. Although this is the last stage, it does not mean that the process is over. The finished prototype may not work as well as hoped so new ideas need to be brainstormed.
