Owain Pedgley
25 June 1996

A designer needs to be conscious of the environment his/her product will ultimately end up in, be this a consideration of how the product will interact with other products or a synopsis of the likely use and abuse that the product will be subjected to by its users.

For the most part, designers do not get to re-design this working environment. In a few cases, the designer may be fortunate in being able to produce a design which will change the way users see and use a particular product group (such as the design of non-stick cookware, the use of touch-sensitive LCD interfaces in keyboard synthesizers and the application of Gore Tex (TM) membrane in mountain jackets). This raises an important point that many innovative designs come about through the creative use of new technologies and that the nucleus of the innovation is not the work of the industrial designer, but of those working in scientific development (though it is often industrial designers who bring the innovation to a manufacturable product to be sold on the market place). It would be interesting to find out what proportion of a design consultancy's work could be classed as 'inventions'- those designs where designers themselves can claim credit for major underlying innovations (as opposed to repackaging of some description).

In the products mentioned thus far, the designer's creativity lays in being able to develop technology into products: the industrial designer is the front-end to innovations that have been made a long way down the line.

This begs the question: what constitutes innovation on the part of the designer? Let's take the design of a simple product as a starting point:

Design of mouse-mat

If this was set as a design exercise, there would be much scope for playing with the product's aesthetics, but the product is so lacking in complexity that there is little to tax or test the well trained industrial designer. However, if one takes a few steps back and looks at the design task in a broader sense, its nature changes considerably:

(i) design of a mousemat (MUNDANE)
(ii) design of a new environment to work a mouse in (INTERESTING)
(iii) design of a new hands-based computer control interface (CHALLENGING)

With (i), the designer is very much fixed by the immediate product that interacts with the mousemat- the mouse. Solutions are likely to be based on the stereotyped existing product- a flat shaped surface that allows smooth mouse movement. With (ii), opportunities arise where the designer can explore how the mouse is used and provide solutions that do not necessarily involve the mouse being flat on a table, or even on anything at all. Note that with (ii), the designer is still tied down by having to design around a stereotypical mouse.

In the case of (iii), the designer is left with a great deal of freedom and can design a system which more or less redefines the environment between computer operator and machine. This will draw upon the designer's creativity and talent to produce something genuinely new; something innovative.

So, innovation in industrial design can come about when the designer's creative talents, both technical and aesthetic-based (though not necessarily combined), are in high demand on a product. More than this though, when the designer is free to explore changes to both the product *and* its environment, products increase their likelihood of being innovative. That is, in these situations designers can conceive unknown, untested and (approaching) unbounded concepts.

A potential title for research in this area might be: 'the interaction of products with products as a determinant of their potential for re-design'. Innovation would form just one component of such a study. Other considerations might be the reluctance by industry to adopt, change or jettison certain product standards or artefacts in order to facilitate re-design, or the reluctance on behalf of the consumer to cease using a certain product in order to make radical re-design viable (such as the use of a car which runs on a mono-rail instead of a road).

Here are a few more examples along the lines of: "is there much point in radically re-designing the (something), if you cannot in some way change (the something that it immediately works with)?".

Q: Is there much point in radically re-designing CD packaging if you cannot in some way change the CD?

A: Of course there is, and there are many examples of such re-designs especially for CD-singles. The CD does not directly influence the overall external packaging design (other than it must be at least 5" in width to accommodate the CD's diameter). Much creativity can be called upon to repackage CDs as a marketing strategy.

Q: Is there much point in re-designing the standard audio outputs on synthesizer equipment, so that they utilise a new improved connector, if manufacturers of audio mixers do not adopt such a new connector?

A: Although the design of the new connector may be innovative and superior, unless it is universally adopted in the marketplace, it is as much good universally as Betamax(TM) videocassettes.

Q: Is there merit in radically re-designing personal automobiles for a new transport system, if it is unlikely that such a transport system will exist?

A: Such design work will be rich in innovation, if only to serve as a stimulus to show what 'could' be possible. If it is the industrial designer's job to show what 'could' be possible rather than 'what will be available, soon, in the form of a marketable product'- then there is much merit in this. But is this the industrial designer's job, or is it the reserve of 'concept competitions' where the designer is allowed to tinker with the product environment? To finalise, should industrial designers, as trained professionals, spend their time on design work which is purely speculative?