Have you ever wondered what great industrial design is all about? If not, it is time you pay attention to this aspect and ensure the industrial design services you avail are top-notch and rewarding in the long run. The prime objective is to create experiences customers cannot live without. Huge brands like Tesla, Apple, and Dyson didn’t reach their positions by chance, and their success is the result of profound industrial design solutions. Hence, it is clear that certain industrial design principles must be followed build brands that are meant to last.
So, if you are a new entrant in the business world, whether as a start-up founder or a part of a design team at a company of repute, it makes sense to understand the core difference between launching a product and making it big among your target customers.
How Design-Driven Thinking Shapes Better Strategy?
Before delving deeper into the key industrial design concepts, it makes more sense to understand the distinction many companies miss. Here, the emphasis is on understanding the difference between product design and industrial design and why it matters.
Product design is about solving specific problems for users concerning individual items. Hence, it is a means of tactical design, such as making a better mouse, developing an intuitive app interface, or designing a high-comfort chair.
Industrial design, on the other hand, is about making big plans to develop a well-connected product range. It allows designing a brand experience that customers can easily relate to. The industrial designers emphasize how products can be created for mass production and how a brand can remain consistent across all locations.
Listed below are the four main pillars of creating a market-winning design:
1. Functionality: Denotes real problem solutions:
Functionality is not just about making the products work; it is about making them work more efficiently than the rest of the market. Hence, this step involves deep user research and can never be based on assumptions. Never fall for just clever features that fail to solve any meaningful problems. Practical functionality means prioritising the attributes that directly impact user outcomes. So, before adding a specific feature, do ask what situation it will ultimately resolve.
2. Aesthetics: Denotes visual design as a strategy to remain competitive
Many people confuse aesthetic with superficial, but actually, these are highly strategic. The visual design plays a significant role in influencing purchase decisions, brand perception, and user adoption rates. It is observed that the brutalist design style is making a comeback, with renowned brands such as Balenciaga and architectural firms actively adopting it. The key reasons for the style’s popularity are its bold look and no-compromise features, but one needs to ensure it aligns well with the brand’s image. Never copy trends; be in the limelight, as it might lead to irreversible decisions.
Simplicity: Denotes the art of sophistication
The third industrial design principle is simplicity, and, in simple terms, it is not about removing features but about making things much easier. Hence, anything that is not required to help your users reach their ultimate goal will definitely stop people from making the purchase. In fact, big companies often introduce features to make only the new version seem updated, looking better than competitors’. Still, such additions might not always make users happy; hence, it is essential to map the journey your users took from their first introduction to the product to where they have reached. Thus, any step that does not directly help them should be removed or simplified to improve the user experience.
Innovation: denotes the creation of new categories
Genuine and meaningful innovations will not merely improve existing solutions but will contribute to reframing the problem from the beginning. This is precisely where start-ups can compete with established players, whose existing business models often constrain.
User-centric design is the need of the hour!
It is observed that traditional market research emphasizes who the users are. In contrast, user-centric design mainly focuses on what exactly they aim to accomplish and the key challenges they face. So, instead of asking who the target customer is, an efficient industrial designer must always ask: what specific job is the product hired to perform? Thankfully, there are research methods available to identify the perfect answer to this question. Such methods include deep usage analytics, behavioural interviews, and prototype testing.
Final Verdict!
Exceptionally well-performed industrial design is never about following formulas; it is more about strategically applying principles to design products that users know they need but won’t be able to survive without.
The questions that must always be asked are:
What role will the product play?
How will it support the business model?
What effect would it have to omit certain features?
How will the aesthetics of the product reinforce brand positioning?
What precise category are you handling with the creation?
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If you wish to seek help from an expert provider of industrial design services, look no further than Technosoft Engineering.