4. The Effects of Organisation Structure on Design
5. Structure and Integration of Design
6. How Much Should Everyone in the Company Know About Design?
7. A Good Mechanism to Review and Improve Design
8. Using Discussion Groups to Build Understanding
9. Introducing the Sequence of Design Framework
10. Situations to Use the Design Sequence Framework
11. Benefits to Learning How Your Company Uses Industrial Design
1. Design Definitions and the Origins of Industrial Design.
Design is most readily understood in terms of tangible things, for example automobiles,
computers, clothes, furniture, restaurants and shops. Most people use the word for both
functionality and style.
We are less likely to use the word in its planning meaning, which is the first meaning given
in the Oxford English Dictionary, where an entire page is devoted to the various meanings. A
mental plan intended for subsequent execution is one definition, another is a preliminary
sketch for a picture or other work of art. All the dictionary meanings imply process more than
they refer to tangible things and many of the writers on design point out that design has
always been a part of a larger process. Certainly this is true for industrial design where it is a
part of a manufacturing process. This factor means that industrial design has changed over
time due to changes in the socio-economic framework.
“ Thus the difference between a seventeenth century pattern maker and a modern industrial
designer is less one of their respective creative activities than of the economic, technological
and social constraints within which the activity is performed”{Sparke, p.xx & xxi.}
The creative aspects of industrial design are well explained in the following: