Industrial design

Industrial design is an integral part of the design process. Depending on the phase of development of a project, a new product or a new process, specialists from R&D, marketing, ergonomics, value analysis, quality, purchasing and engineering departments are involved, in turn or in interaction.

Industrial design is part of this group, and its specificity lies in the ability to propose formal (plastic) solutions, i.e. tangible (drawings, plans, models, digital modeling), to what is predefined by marketing or functional specifications (CdCF).

By design activity, we mean the proposals, directions and conceptual choices made at a very early stage in the innovation process. Design acts as a relay between marketing strategy in the conception phase, and development in the production phase.

This makes a clear distinction between upstream design activities and downstream production activities (although the latter include their own design activities).

We classify design activities as project engineering, and industrialization activities as production engineering.

All of which can be understood as the science of industrial systems and products.