Industrial Design vs Product Design, The Similarities & Differences?
Learn how industrial design and product design overlap and differ, with insights into their unique focus areas.
When designing products, the first step is to create a functional and appealing design. This is where the expertise of industrial designers and product designers comes in. Both industrial design and product design processes involve similar steps, but they have different goals. For example, industrial design focuses on enhancing a product's work, while product design looks at how a target market will receive a product. Understanding the differences and similarities between the two can help B2B companies build out their content marketing strategy. This article will explore industrial design vs. product design to help you understand their unique properties and how they can affect your business.
NUMI designs products that help businesses establish a solid foundation for their next project. By leveraging NUMI's expertise in product design, you can achieve your goals faster and with better results.
What is Industrial Design?
Industrial design is the professional practice of designing:
- Products
- Devices
- Objects
- Service
That is what millions of people around the world use every day. Industrial designers typically focus on a product's:
- Appearance
- Functionality
- Manufacturability
They are often involved in far more during a development cycle, ultimately affecting the lasting value and experience a product or service provides end users.
Every object you interact with daily in your home, office, school, or public setting results from a design process. During this process, an industrial designer (and their team) makes myriad decisions that aim to improve your life through well-executed design.
Who Do Industrial Designers Work With?
Industrial designers are commonly part of multidisciplinary teams comprising:
- Strategists
- Engineers
- User interface (UI) designers
- User experience (UX) designers
- Project managers
- Branding experts
- Graphic designers
- Customers
- Manufacturers
All working together towards a common goal. The collaboration of so many different perspectives allows the design team to understand a problem to the fullest extent and craft a solution that skillfully responds to a user's unique needs.
Who Do Industrial Designers Design For?
Industrial designers design products for:
- Users
- Mainly people
- But sometimes pet of all ages
- Races
- Demographics
- Incomes
- Ethnicities
- Abilities
- Gender identities or expressions
An empathetic designer can “walk in someone else’s shoes” through research and observation to glean insights that will inform the rest of the design process and ultimately result in a design solution that solves a problem in a beneficial and meaningful way.
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What is Product Design?
Product design focuses on creating new or improving existing products to solve problems within a specific market. This process can apply to physical products, but we’ll focus on digital product design in this article. Digital products can include:
- Apps
- Software
- Websites
The Importance of Product Design
Successful product design bridges user needs and a business’s goals. It’s not enough to create a product that works.
It must also meet the target audience’s expectations and help the business achieve its objectives. These goals may include increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction, or boosting market share.
The Product Design Process
Product design isn’t a linear process. It’s a multi-layered craft encompassing design, user experience, collaboration, and more. Many of a product designer’s day-to-day tasks will fit into one or more categories.
Product design starts with understanding a product's context, such as its target audience and market. From there, the process involves several iterations to create a product that satisfies user and business needs.
The Foundations Of Product Design
Product design’s foundations start with design thinking, which is a user-centric way to integrate real users' needs into technological and business requirements. To understand product design, you must understand design thinking well.
Product Design VS UX Design
UX design fits into product design but centers around the product’s usability, look, and user experience (UX). Product design also involves improving usability and the user experience, but in context by focusing on big-picture implications like process, cost, and the brand’s overall position in the market.
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- NUMI helps with:
- Product design
- Web design
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- Mobile design
- Prototyping
- UX design
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Industrial Design vs Product Design: What are The Similarities?
Problem-Solving Skills: Overlapping Strengths of Industrial and Product Designers
Industrial and product design share numerous similarities despite their differences in scope and focus. These shared traits highlight their collaborative nature in creating effective and appealing products.
Here's an overview of their commonalities:
- Both industrial and product designers rely heavily on problem-solving to identify and address challenges.
- Whether it’s refining a product’s usability, improving manufacturing processes, or solving user-specific pain points, these skills are critical.
- Designers evaluate existing products, pinpoint areas for improvement, and devise solutions to enhance functionality, aesthetics, or manufacturing efficiency.
Sketching: An Essential Step in Both Industrial Design and Product Design
Sketching is a foundational step in both disciplines, allowing designers to brainstorm and visualize ideas quickly. These initial sketches help them process concepts, communicate ideas effectively, and iterate designs rapidly. The process bridges the gap between abstract concepts and tangible ideas, enabling designers to refine their vision collaboratively.
Drafting: The Technical Side of Industrial and Product Design
Both industrial and product designers may create or work with engineering drafts and blueprints. These documents provide the technical specifications for turning concepts into physical products. While industrial designers are more likely to produce these drafts, product designers benefit from understanding them to ensure their designs align with technical feasibility.
Prototyping: Testing Designs for Functionality and Usability
Creating prototypes is a shared practice in industrial and product design. Prototypes allow designers to test their concepts' feasibility, usability, and functionality. Whether a scaled-down model or a full-sized version, prototyping helps refine designs by providing tangible feedback, conducting research, or facilitating focus group evaluations.
Research: Essential to Both Product and Industrial Design
Research is integral to both fields. Designers can create relevant and appealing products by studying user needs, market trends, cultural influences, and potential costs. Ethnographic research, which examines:
- Ergonomics
- Cultural norms
- Socioeconomic conditions
It is especially valuable for tailoring products to specific user groups.
Focus on User Experience: How Industrial and Product Design Put the User First
Both disciplines require a deep understanding of user experience principles. Ensuring products are intuitive, accessible, and enjoyable to use is a shared priority. Designers in both fields strive to align their creations with user preferences and behaviors to enhance overall satisfaction and effectiveness.
Why Communication Skills Matter for Industrial and Product Designers
Strong presentation skills are essential for both industrial and product designers. Whether pitching a concept to clients, collaborating with teams, or presenting ideas during stakeholder meetings, designers must articulate their vision clearly and persuasively. These skills also help them explain technical concepts in simple terms, address questions, and incorporate feedback effectively.
Industrial Design vs Product Design: What are The Differences?
Industrial design and product design have many similarities, but they are also very different. The two fields serve different purposes, focus on different aspects of product creation, and require varying skill sets. Here’s a closer look at their differences.
Purpose
Industrial design focuses on the overall creation, functionality, and aesthetics of products intended for mass production. It involves considering the manufacturing process and how the product fits into the broader market or industrial framework. Industrial designers often aim to enhance the product's usability, appeal, and feasibility in manufacturing.
Product design concentrates on solving specific problems through product development. The emphasis is on creating products that meet user needs and solve particular challenges. Product design addresses physical and digital products, including software, focusing on user experience, features, and functionality.
Scope of Products
Industrial design typically deals with large-scale, specialized products manufactured in high volumes, such as:
- Vehicles
- Home appliances
- Consumer electronics
It emphasizes products' aesthetic and ergonomic appeal while ensuring they are practical and manufacturable.
Product design covers a broader range of items, often focusing on everyday products or tools, such as kitchen gadgets and mobile apps. Recently, it has expanded into digital products like user interfaces and software solutions.
Focus on Features and Details
Industrial design focuses on the product's overall appeal to customers, including its:
- visual design
- Usability
- Marketability
The industrial design incorporates elements like:
- Form
- Texture
- material selection
To make products attractive and functional for the target market.
Product design involves delving into a product's details and features, ensuring that every element aligns with user needs and expectations. It’s more about refining a product's functionality and user experience to meet its intended purpose.
Required Technical Knowledge
Industrial design requires a strong understanding of engineering principles, manufacturing processes, materials, and business models. To ensure efficient product production, industrial designers must be familiar with creating CAD drawings, prototyping, and the technical aspects of product development.
Product design requires technical knowledge, but product designers focus less on manufacturing specifics and more on product specifications and applications. They often prioritize user-centered design principles and may work on platforms like software or web applications, where technical programming or UX design skills are more relevant.
Relation Between the Two
Product design is often seen as a subset of the broader industrial design process. Industrial design encompasses the entire lifecycle of a product from concept to market, while product design focuses specifically on creating and improving the product to meet user needs.
Industrial design is concerned with the big picture, from concept to:
- Manufacturing
- Emphasizing aesthetics
- Usability
- Mass production feasibility
Product design focuses on:
- Solving specific problems
- Emphasizing user needs
- Detailed product features
- Functionality
Often, this includes digital applications. In practice, both disciplines overlap and collaborate, combining their strengths to create products that are user-friendly and manufacturable. Their distinct focus areas ensure a balance between innovative solutions and practical implementation.
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The Role of Digital Design In Industrial Design & Product Design
1. Turbocharging the Design Process
Digital design tools like:
- 3D modeling software
- CAD (Computer-Aided Design)
- Rendering programs
Industrial and product designers can use these tools to conceptualize, visualize, and refine their ideas more efficiently. These tools enable designers to create accurate virtual prototypes, simulate functionality, and test aesthetics before committing to physical production, saving time and resources.
2. Designing Digital Interfaces for Physical Products
For many modern products, ingenious devices, the digital interface is as important as the physical design. Digital design is crucial in crafting user interfaces (UI) and user experiences (UX) that complement the product’s physical form. For example, the seamless integration of an app interface with a wearable device involves product and digital designers collaborating.
3. Expanding Product Capabilities
Digital design extends the functionality of products by incorporating software elements. IoT (Internet of Things) devices and connected products rely heavily on digital design to enable communication, data exchange, and remote control. In this way, digital design enhances traditional industrial and product designs by adding layers of digital functionality.
4. Specialized Skill Sets
While there is overlap, digital design introduces unique requirements that differ from traditional industrial and product design.
- Graphic Design and Typography: Essential for creating visually appealing interfaces, layouts, and branding.
- Coding and Software Engineering: Understanding programming and software development is vital for creating digital products or integrating digital aspects into physical designs.
- Internet Architecture and Maintenance: Digital designers often need knowledge about how digital products will be:some text
- Hosted
- Served
- Maintained
5. Collaboration Across Disciplines
Industrial, product, and digital designers often collaborate in multidisciplinary projects to ensure a cohesive design.
For Example:
- An industrial designer may focus on the ergonomic shape of a smart speaker.
- The product designer may refine its functionality to meet user needs.
- A digital designer may develop the software interface and voice assistant experience.
This synergy ensures that the physical and digital aspects of the product work together harmoniously.
6. Revolutionizing Prototyping
Digital design introduces virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) tools into the prototyping stage. Designers can create immersive prototypes, enabling stakeholders to experience and evaluate products in a simulated environment before production begins. This approach is particularly useful for industrial and product design projects with complex user interactions or environments.
7. Blurring Boundaries Between Physical and Digital
The evolution of digital design has led to the creation of hybrid products where the distinction between physical and digital is increasingly blurred.
Examples include:
- Smartphones: Combining physical design with digital user interfaces.
- Smart Home Devices: Blending industrial design aesthetics with software functionality.
- Wearables: Integrating ergonomic design with real-time digital data feedback.
Digital design has become an indispensable component of both industrial and product design, enabling the creation of innovative, user-friendly, and multifunctional products. By merging traditional design principles with modern digital techniques, designers can better address the demands of contemporary users who expect seamless integration of physical and digital experiences.
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