Industrial

What is industrial design?

Industrial design is concerned with of bridging social needs, technical constraints, and manufacturing opportunities. The requirements below are used by research + DESIGN to balance these often competing factors during product development.

1. General product category:
   Broad product categorisation and framing are used as starting points to understand client assumptions and user ideals.
2. General operating environment:
   The physical environment in which the product functions provides both design reference material and operational constraints.
3. Ergonomic considerations:
   Ergonomic datasets inform design decisions when a user manipulates a product in areas ranging from grip, to force, to strain.
4. Anthropometric considerations:
   Anthropometric data informs environmental design decisions that impact on the user in areas such as pathways, reach, and viewpoint.
5. Frequency/duration of usage:
   The frequency and duration of use helps establish design options, product durability expectations, and safe usage.
6. Product dimension:
   The width, length, and height of the product should be taken into account during product usage, storage, and transport.
7. Product weight:
   The weight of the product influences product usage, transport, and depending on the country of use, safety directives.
8. Material selection:
   Material selection takes into account functional, aesthetic, supply-chain, safety, and processing properties.
9. Colour selection:
   Colour selection takes into account hue, tint, saturation, shade, tone, intensity, depth, and functional impact.
10. Texture selection:
    Texture selection takes into account pattern, repeatability, depth, direction, pitch, and functional impact.
11. General assembly:
    The general assembly occupies the top-level of a product, and may incorporate various contractor and supplier outputs.
12. Sub-assemblies:
    Although sub-assemblies are designed to be incorporated into a general assembly, they are ideally testable in a stand-alone state.
13. Key components:
    By identifying key components with parent-child dependencies across the assembly, failure modes can be effectively managed.
14. Product accessories:
    Accessories that extend product usage and increase market penetration are strategised during primary development.
15. OTS components:
    Off The Shelf (OTS) components help mitigate development risk and capital expenditure, however, they do dictate design options.
16. OEM components:
    An Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) provides components that can be customised for incorporation into bespoke designs.
17. Design reuse:
    The product being developed can incorporate design solutions from previous, and in turn be incorporated into future, iterations.
18. Product life expectancy:
    Product life expectancy is based on technological compatibility, product durability, and market acceptance.
19. Repair and maintenance:
    Users expect a product to be repairable and increasingly self-maintainable through the use of official guides and accessible resources.
20. Manufacturing processes:
    The choice of manufacturing processes directly influence design opportunities, production quantity, and unit cost.
21. Annual production:
    Annual production helps establish preferred manufacturing processes, batch ordering, and scope of assembly operation.
22. Total production:
    Total production quantity ascertains whether part-cost can be reduced by amortising tooling investment over total production run.
23. Estimated budgets:
    The estimated budget should take into account OTS components, OEM components, tooling investments, and assembly costs.
24. Design evaluation:
    Quick and iterative testing of ideas is provided through sketches, renderings, block-models, and rapid-prototyping.