There are those of the engineers and the industrial designers, of course, as well as, perhaps,
that of the ergonomists or human factors people. There are also the design realities of others
involved with new product development, including people from marketing and manufacturing
[or operations], and importantly, the people in general management. Each exhibits a different
view of the nature, purpose and value of design” Dumas & Mintzberg 91.
4. The Effects of Organisation Structure on Design
We need to improve the integration of differing design realities, but the structure of most
companies, in regard to industrial design makes this quite difficult
If industrial design comes within a marketing function and marketers buy the creative services
of an industrial design consultant on an occasional basis for a special project, we will consider
this quite differently than if industrial design is a part of the manufacturing function and we
have a couple of engineers working in a small studio turning out tooling design on a day to
day basis.
There are three main structural forms for design, one is where a single function has control,
another is where there are separate design functions, usually industrial design and
engineering, and a third where one of these separate functions dominates the other. A fourth
form of structure, though not often seen, is where functions share control of design, for
example, marketing and R&D.
The second for, separate design functions is often found in industries with the, “dominant
designs” of Abernathy and Utterback, these are mature product types whose attributes time
has stabilised so that producers conform to standard configurations – the ball point pen, the
automobile, the VCR and increasingly, perhaps, the laptop computer. Here, the structure is
decomposed into functions of design. This makes it simpler to manage an ongoing series of
modifications – to make one brand or product a bit prettier or a bit faster etc. In the dominant