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Product design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business or enterprise to its customers.[1] It is concerned with the efficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.[2]
Product designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, making them tangible through products in a more systematic approach. Their role is to combine art, science and technology to create tangible three-dimensional goods. This evolving role has been facilitated by digital tools that allow designers to communicate, visualize and analyze ideas in a way that would have taken greater manpower in the past.
Product design is sometimes confused with industrial design, industrial design is concerned with the aspect of that process that brings that sort of artistic form and usability usually associated with craft design to that of mass produced goods.[3]
The design process is the transformation of an idea, needs, or wants by consumers or the marketplace at large, into a product that satisfies these needs. This is usually accomplished by adventurous people that are willing to take it on. Sometimes an engineer will be involved on some levels but not always.[4] Product designers follow various [methodology] that requires a specific skill set (usually in engineering) to complete.
Design is basically a problem solving exercise. The design of a new product consists of the following stages:
Product design ranges from furniture, electronics, lighting, tools, toys, and general everyday objects.
For new products product design is of six important steps: 1. customer needs identification 2. conceptualization 3. system level design 4. Detailed design 5. Testing and refinement 6. Production ramp up
The design of products of every type is clearly linked to the economic health of manufacturing sectors...Innovation provides much of the competitive impetus for the development of new products, with new technology often requiring a new design interpretation. It only takes one manufacturer to create a new product paradigm to force the rest of the industry to catch up - fuelling further innovation.[6]