Hi everyone. In this video we're going to be discussing industrial design processes. When it comes to industrial design, there are three design challenges. First and foremost, the people find it desirable, otherwise it's just designing and manufacturing stuff. It's got to be attractive. Is it viable from a business perspective and isn't technically feasible? A lot of the feasibility aspects will come down to, you may want to have a certain look or feel, but then it's not going to meet the technical standards. An example could be, let's just say you want old, gorgeous metal equipment that's used just with electrical systems. Then you know metal is not going to be safe for use with these systems. Then you need to make some modifications. What can be done, what can't be done while meeting the safety and performance metrics that we set. Also do people find it desirable? A lot of market research goes into determining whether or not people find something attractive. This is especially important now with wearable technologies, because when you're wearing a smart watch, if it's not attractive and people don't feel like it looks on point, then they're not going to be that interested in buying it. Same thing with carrying around laptops, tablets. All of these doesn't look attractive. Are they going to look cool in public? Back when computers and all that started to become main consumer products, the emphasis was on functionality because there were pretty much stationary and not carried out into the walls like, well this is going to be in an office. It doesn't need to be pretty, but now that we have handheld devices. We work on them around the clock whenever we need. It's appearance plays a much bigger part than it needed to in the past. People's behaviors and changes and shifts in how we interact with the world around us plays a huge role in the need for industrial design. The process is an investigation of customer needs. Now, understanding what's important to your customer is going to be key. An example, especially in industrial design, when you start to take a look at needs, things for infants and babies. Glad those days are over. But you want to have the functionality. You want it to be easy to clean. You want it to be able to be lightweight enough because you're going to be carrying a ton of other things. You want it to be cute and meet the standards of design standards that you need and it needs to meet a whole bunch of benchmarks to be feasible and viable and attractive to new parents. But also people's tastes in generationally change as well. It's very interesting how things shift over time as consumer taste change. In baby products back when I had kids, the main target market with Gen-X was all rockstar stuff, you don't see that around as much anymore. But you take a look at Control drawings, models, and coordination with engineering, manufacturing and external vendors. You also make sure that you do a wide range of tests as well. What circumstances is this product going to be used in? Is it going to be something like, let's just say it's a changing nap for a baby. Can it be machine washable? Absolutely. Can it soak for a while. Will it repels stains and other stuff? Does it need to be dry-cleaned. So no, you don't want anything for a baby that needs to be dry-cleaned. It's ridiculous. Choosing your materials and durability and all of these sorts of things is important in industrial design. Because you've got to make sure it meets the functions. Investigation of customer needs. Remember that with your customer, the voice of the customer isn't the specification. When you're given the information like, from the customer and the voice of the customer translated into a requirement and then into a specification and make the specifications quantifiable. Set a target range for performance for your product or service. Because you need to make sure that your game is accountable and that people are. Accountability is key when you start to deliver or launch a company. Conceptualization. After establishing the customer needs, industrial designers help the team to find solutions. With material science advances now, it's absolutely incredible what people are building by creating different sorts of alloys and composites and recycling. Industrial design is becoming a huge feature when integrated with designing for the environment. So a lot of people now who are starting to launch companies, especially in home where in consumer goods are looking at things that are biodegradable and can be easily recycled without leaving plastics in the ocean, like how things were typically done. Looking at the nuke forms of composites for ergonomics, bamboo is a big one. It's really quite a great age to be living in for industrial design, but also designing for the environment. Refinement and concept selection. Industrial designers build models of the most promising concepts. Again, we're in a great age for this field. Mainly also now because of 3D printing and how accessible it is. When launching your company and you're coming up with your prototypes, you may want to test it with different types of plastics, materials and have it printed on a variety of different 3D printer, so you might find this ABS plastic is great, but it doesn't come in this color. What can I do to have it meet the sort of overall design features that people like in terms of colors, palette, shape, all those sorts of fun things. Then you can go back and make modifications as needed. Traditionally with industrial design, it was expensive to prototype things. It was a lot more expensive to prototype. But now that barrier to entry for creating prototypes and launching companies is actually really low. It's lower than it's ever been. So it's a great time to be an artist and a creative type going into industrial design. Control drawings or models. Again, with 3D printing, it's a great age also using Photoshop illustrator and EPS files, vectors. It's just fascinating. I love this stuff by the way. Industrial designers switch from soft models and sketches to hard models and information intensive renderings. The information intensive renderings have a lot to do with meeting the technical specifications that you've set for the product. It can't just be pretty and attractive. It's got to be able to hit the benchmarks. Especially when you're dealing with industrial design for regulated industries, whether a certain performance and safety standards that are in place. An investigation of customer needs. Engage your customers from the very beginning, like by adopting lean UX methodologies and user-centered design. You can have them test the different sorts of elementary drops and prototypes and make modifications as needed. Especially now in the field of medicine, where there are a lot more women practicing as surgeons. Traditionally a lot of medical devices were pretty large, but they're becoming more compact because as demographics change in certain fields, it needs to be accessible and be able to be used by both men and women. For example, look at the space launch where they couldn't have two women in space because only a certain space suit would fit one. Anyway, industrial design and meeting customer needs as demographic change, huge growing field. The refinement and final concept selection as well. You may find that based on the aesthetics of the product and the functionality you may have to appeal, you may have to re-hit a different market than you initially planned before expanding and being able to put the R&D and to make the modifications works feasible as a business with a new market. That's a very common where you build out the capabilities from a functional standpoint and then gradually improve the industrial design. Because the quality controls have to be in place. Your product has to be able to perform the job that you say that it will. Thanks.
