Design
Product design is essential to any company or business that is involved in the manufacture and the marketing of any kind of physical product. Design is basically about making things and products better for the end-users and consumers, better for the company and in the long run, better for the world.
A product that is better and well-conceived would effectively: sell more; obtain wider distribution; increase market share; improve margins; carve out new opportunities; decrease production costs; and ultimately increase revenue.
Product design is also a fundamental part of the bigger process of the development of new products. The planning out of the product design must complement all the other parts of the development process. Product design involves a number of phases which includes: briefing; researching into the social, economic and the technological contexts; strategic enquiry and orientation; idea generation and innovation; concept design; concept development; design development; and the further phases and liaison.
Here are the different phases explained.
1. Briefing: This is basically a knowledge-sharing activity. It is usually put down in a brief document, which describes the requirements. It could be complex and is generally backed up by research. The brief document is created after all the influencing factors have been considered and better understood.
Clients usually work with a team of product designers as the brief is put together. Getting the assistance of the designers early on in the process makes sure that the vision of the client would be used, along with the ideas that the product designers have for the product.
The briefing usually covers three views: marketing, which would describe the aspects of the product, along with its functionality and positioning with its main competitors and brand imperatives; technical, which would spell out any restrictions on the investment required for new tools, parts and components, as well as the product specifications regarding performance, cost, manufacture and standards that need to be used; and commercial, which could cover the aspects relevant to sales and distribution such as the return on investment.
2. Researching into the social, economic and the technological contexts: The client usually supplies a copy of the market research done on a particular product but there would also be times that the design team would recommend and occasionally do their own research to fill in any gaps about the understanding of the needs of the consumer.
3. Strategic enquiry and orientation: Designers would form, contribute to and validate the overall strategy that would be used for the product design.
4. Idea generation and innovation: This phase would include the generation of new product ideas which would offer benefits to both the manufacturer and the consumer. Typical outputs would usually be sketches, models and CAD layouts.
5. Concept design: The ideas would then be evaluated by the client and the designers and assess all the influencing factors.
6. Concept development: The concepts would then be studied on a closer level and check all it aspects such as the ergonomic, production, technical and aesthetic.
7. Design development: This would be the phase where the final design of the product is made out.
8. Further phases and liaison: Once the product design is finalized, future technical developments that could lower the cost of production and improve performance and functionality would be noted for future designs.
Although the term product can describe anything and everything from a health insurance plan to a child’s plaything, the concept of product design is the same across the board. The process of conceptualizing product design should be well planned out and implemented to ensure that the resulting product would be the best for both the manufacturer and the consumer.