Is Industrial Design Dead?

October 2, 2009

Some striking comments are emerging about the industrial design profession and, specifically, its professional society, The Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA), founded in 1967. “The IDSA has served a valuable role in the evolution of design as a professional discipline, and has helped advance the field to a point where the IDSA is now essentially irrelevant,” comments Jon Kolko, a creative director at frog design. He made the comments in a blog post after attending the IDSA annual conference in Miami.

Practitioners of industrial design sometimes consider themselves more closely aligned to the art community than the engineering community as they conceptualize new product designs. And that could be part of their undoing. On the one hand, says Kolko, the function of industrial design is become more of a price-sensitive commodity, and new practitioners are popping up all over the world, particularly Asia. On the other, there’s the growing sophistication of materials technology and processing. ”This is advancing in the opposite direction of a commodity - it’s becoming increasingly specialized, increasingly intellectual, and incredibly complicated,” he writes.

He cites a keynote presentation at the IDSA meeting by Dr. Andrew Dent, a vice president at the Materials Connexion. Dent made several interesting points in his presentation, particularly emphasizing the need for industrial designers to consider environmental issues in their conceptions. He referenced for example what he calls “mono materials”, which are really designs that take into account ease of recycling or re-use. They aren’t painted; they come from one class of materials (e.g. polyolefins in an auto interior), and they consolidate parts. These are not new goals to design engineers, who more likely see them first as routes to efficiency and reduced cost. Kolko says: “While material sciences will absolutely not become commodities, they also will soon be out of the grasps of designers.” And he also mentions the importance of electronics integration into design, now popularly called mechatronics-but certainly nothing new.

The blog post popped up in a few places, and many other industrial designers chimed in. One commented: “Designers who never learned ‘process’ but only ‘form’ are part of the blame, and of course the ones paid the most to extinguish their profession.”

Posted by Doug Smock on October 2, 2009 | Comments (4)

October 22, 2009

In response to: Is Industrial Design Dead?
Robin Schulemann commented:

There are many of us who are industrial designers at heart, from the human factors perspective(in my case I have an ID degree), but operate between traditional ID and engineering disciplines, with most of a days intellectual effort going into engineering. Those of us that do this are essentially artistic engineers yet we live and breath the basic science, mechanics, electronics, and by necessity... materials. But this twain is all about innovation/intuition, fed by intense curiosity, and is a behavior that is not easily trained. Further, the somewhat (initially) abstract space between human factors and engineering is too often uncomfortable for engineers and industrial/interaction designers alike. As an organization and profession, industrial design needs to attract more cross-disciplinary talent that naturally think as artistic engineers and begin to move the profession and its identity towards a more ubiquitous role in the value chain and products lifecycle. This would fundementally require ID be a multidisciplinary profession. Finally, as a point of practice, I would suggest ID schools need to bolt to the engineering schools to facilitate cross pollination and develop real world multidisciplinary skills.

October 20, 2009

In response to: Is Industrial Design Dead?
Louisville KY Designer commented:

The last comment of the article rings very true to my experiences. Interest in and knowledge of new emerging and existing technologies, materials, processes, electronics, and mechanical design skills etc... are very critical to working together on a team to come up with creative design solutions. Industrial Designers that do not care about these important areas of the design process and make no attempt to keep up to date have skills to offer that are very limited at times.

October 20, 2009

In response to: Is Industrial Design Dead?
Steve Meyer commented:

The design issue is constantly changing precisely because of new materials and process implications. Everything is price and performance, so anything that changes the price changes the game.
As to the "mechatronics" comment, this is made by someone not very familiar. The mere integration of electronics doesn't make it Mechatronic. It's a bit more complicated than that.

October 20, 2009

In response to: Is Industrial Design Dead?
Designer commented:

As with many such organizations, IDSA is a haven for the semi-skilled whose notoriety stems from who they know rather than what they know. This has always been true and continues to be. As for the profession dying, this is more likely to come from the ability of any slug to create a nice rendering on the computer despite his inability to "design" anything, and management's inability to judge the quality of that "design".

Design News Partner Zones

Light Matters: The Unsung Heroes of Modern Health Care
First, let's define "no-compromise." In an ideal configuration, this lamp would use a high-brightness LED (HBLED) that is built into a small, integrated package and is able to produce a large quantity of focused light, operate with a high level of reliability and generate no audible noise. Is this difficult? Yes, but it is possible.
Read More

Design Engineers' Portal for Sensing and Machine Safety
Whatever industry you're in, or whatever product you manufacture, the right sensors to automate your plant, and to improve your overall efficiency, quality and safety are a must. You'll find Banner Engineering to be an amazing resource of products, training and people with expertise.