The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

1.4 Industrial Design Engineering

Since the discipline of industrial design engineering plays a key role in product development and hence forms a pivot of this book, it would be relevant to explore the setting and definitions of industrial design engineering and hence create a common understanding about this discipline among our readers.

In the scholarly practice, the discipline of design can be split up into three main subdomains: (1) industrial design (ID), (2) industrial design engineering (IDE), and (3) design engineering (DE; Figure 1.4.1).

Figure 1.4.1 The three subdomains of design

The origin of these three domains varies. Industrial design, on one hand, has its roots in the arts and crafts (Cross, 1990; Lofthouse, 2004) and is often taught at art academies. Design engineering, on the other hand, is based on technology and technological models (Buijs, 2003; Lofthouse, 2007; Pahl and Beitz, 1984; Roozenburg and Eekels, 1998) and is mostly lectured at technical universities and engineering schools. Industrial design engineering can be seen as a combination of the previous two, with its roots in both engineering design and industrial design (Buijs, 2003).

The subdomains of design differ not only in their background but also in their way of approaching and solving design problems. For example, Lofthouse (2004) pointed out that the industrial designer is predominantly an imaginative, ...