Industrial Design vs Product Design: What is the Difference

Some industries use industrial design and product design terms interchangeably. There is a thin line between the scope of industrial design engineers and product design engineers. In this article, we will focus on the difference between Product Design vs Industrial Design?

To understand the difference, we will understand what is industrial design and product design? Click this link to read about the product design and development process.

What is Industrial Design ?

Before the first industrial revolution, product manufacturing activities were without automation or machines. As a result of manual work, manufacturing productivity was small.

But after the first industrial revolution, a new term Industrial Design is introduced to the world. Industrial designers were responsible for the following tasks.

New products shall perform the required function and appeal to customers to buy new products and replace existing products.
Design Products for manufacturing in large volumes.
Reduce product manufacturing cost or value engineering.

Industrial designers focus on product features, aesthetics, customer requirements, manufacturing, and cost. They don’t go into the technical details of a product.

What is Product Design ?

Product Design is a subset of industrial design. A product designer is responsible for delivering a fully functional product. They go into detail about each product function. We can classify Product design into various categories such as mechanical product design, electrical product design, etc.

In a product design team, a mechanical engineer is responsible for the mechanical design, and an electrical engineer is responsible for the electrical design of the product. They work to fulfill the industrial design and functional requirements.

For example, if a team is working on the design of a refrigerator. The product design will have mechanical, hardware, electrical, embedded software, team members. Teams are responsible according to the engineer’s technical skills.

What is the difference between Product Design and Industrial Design?

Industrial design is a broader term. The product design team works as per the input provided by industrial designers. In other words, industrial design involves activities such as product specification, aesthetics, and look finalization. But product design involves detailed design of the product as per specifications provided by the industrial design team.

To be an industrial designer, you shall have good knowledge of your product, competitors, and customer. Whereas, a good product designer has good domain technical knowledge.

Sometimes the same engineer works as an industrial designer and product designer in new startups and small companies.

For example, as a mechanical design engineer in a small company, I was assigned tasks such as aesthetic design, benchmarking of customer products, and product design with budget constraints. Click this link to know about the benefits and disadvantages of automation.