Abstract

As a profession, industrial design has been affected by different dynamics throughout its history. One of the dynamics which affected industrial design strongly is the arrival of new technology. One of the fields in which information technology revolution happened is the arrival of micro-electronics, particularly in the area of telecommunication. This created an entirely new area of professional practice which was first named user interface design, but then developed to become a new professional practice, interaction design. Although interaction design is a growing profession today, interaction designers often have to explain what an interaction designer actually does and argue that their specialty is not something that anyone could do without a formal education both to stakeholders and clients who buy their designs. Furthermore there still seems to be confusion when the job of industrial designers and interaction designers are overviewed together. The aim of this paper is to build a background for role sharing in design processes with a specific focus on industrial design and interaction design. Role sharing in design processes is highly related with design practice. Thus the empirical data for this research has been gathered through two sets of interviews and also a validating case study based on a product’s design process. There are significant parts of the design process in which interaction design and industrial design collaborate. The closest and the most intense collaboration take place in early phases of design process such as concept generation and creation of design alternatives which are explored in-depth in the paper.

Keywords

design process, industrial design, interaction design

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Jul 1st, 12:00 AM

Yours or Mine? Role sharing between industrial design and interaction design

As a profession, industrial design has been affected by different dynamics throughout its history. One of the dynamics which affected industrial design strongly is the arrival of new technology. One of the fields in which information technology revolution happened is the arrival of micro-electronics, particularly in the area of telecommunication. This created an entirely new area of professional practice which was first named user interface design, but then developed to become a new professional practice, interaction design. Although interaction design is a growing profession today, interaction designers often have to explain what an interaction designer actually does and argue that their specialty is not something that anyone could do without a formal education both to stakeholders and clients who buy their designs. Furthermore there still seems to be confusion when the job of industrial designers and interaction designers are overviewed together. The aim of this paper is to build a background for role sharing in design processes with a specific focus on industrial design and interaction design. Role sharing in design processes is highly related with design practice. Thus the empirical data for this research has been gathered through two sets of interviews and also a validating case study based on a product’s design process. There are significant parts of the design process in which interaction design and industrial design collaborate. The closest and the most intense collaboration take place in early phases of design process such as concept generation and creation of design alternatives which are explored in-depth in the paper.

 

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