The world of item design is filled with myths and misconceptions. Superb product design, a great number of people believe, is created by a design genius. She wakes up in the night with THE IDEA which will change humankind forever. Without loosing any time she sits down at her desk and works tirelessly for the next 72 hrs, neither eating nor drinking until one of the several problems that plagues humankind is solved.
Ok, we’re exaggerating a little bit but we think you get the point.
Fantastic goods are not designed that way. Nothing might be further from the truth.
In real life, wonderful item design is teamwork. Designers, engineers and our customers work together to generate a fantastic, brilliant, stunning product.
And it is not an simple objective. Everyone associated with the process has a different viewpoint on how the merchandise should be.
Take the designer: She’d like to achieve the most pleasing and stimulating merchandise. A merchandise of enduring influence. Designers, especially our designers at DETEKT, are not satisfied without difficulty. They want a 150% ideal item. Anything else is not acceptable. A great looking product, effortless to utilize with a fantastic user knowledge. If it doesn’t meet all these criteria – forget it!
Then there’s the engineer: His task is to take the conceptual design of the merchandise and make it easy to produce. So for an engineer questions like “what material are we going to use”, “can we create the shapes and forms easily”, “how difficult will the tooling process be” are most vital . And, of course, “can the product be manufactured at your charge point”.
Needless to point out that designers and engineers sometimes clash.
If you let the designer get her way, you might end up with an item that is visually stunning yet too challenging or too highly-priced to produce.
An engineer will continually go for the safe option. That’s great for manufacturing but you’ll loose out on an innovative and insanely great design.
And then there’s the customer naturally. Our clients carry the most crucial weight in the merchandise development process. In the end, we’re right here to design and engineer a stunning, breath taking product that blows everybody away.
Yet from a customers perspective it is essential that the product can certainly be sold. That means it demands to be manufactured at a particular price level point.
So how do you get such different views together? Yep, by working together. Needless to say, that there are long discussions in each project meeting.
Together with our designers, engineers and clients we work on discovering the key qualities of a merchandise and will design and engineer a merchandise that is just awesome.
So good design isn’t an one-man (or one woman) show. It is a collaborative effort by designers, engineers and clients working together to produce something unique.
We at DETEKT are proud to be part of this process.
Georgette Adanas has been writing articles on design for manufacturing since 2003.