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25 Bad Habits of Industrial Designers

Design Tips
Posted by DT
Dec 26, 2007
(18 comments)






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About time I got to this one and I though it makes a great post to face the year end with!

I also hope to keep this as a living document that gets constantly updated (with additional input from all my readers), and a good reference guide for industrial designers that want to learn to rule the world!

1) Looking at other products for inspiration.

2) Not creating or studying the design brief.

3) Not checking if the concept fulfils the design brief.

4) Spending too much time on the computer.

5) Not improving their sketch communication skills.

6) Not improving their verbal communication skills.

7) Not making a concept model because they were lazy or not wanting to get dirty.

8) Coming to work late.

9) Not understanding that a design is not theirs but the company’s.

10) Getting too emotionally involved in their designs.

11) Not being friends with Engineering.

12) Forgetting to compromise.

13) Not being friends with Marketing.

14) Mistaking arrogance for confidence.

15) Forgetting Industrial Design requires multi-disciplinary skills.

16) Being disorganized in mind and/or space.

17) Poor Time management.

18) Not planning a 3D construction process before doing 3D modelling.

19) Designing in a 3D program.

20) Forgetting to document their work.

21) Forgetting that there are costs impacts to design decisions.

22) Not including draft angles and part lines in 3D models or design files.

23) Forgetting to save work or worst deleting it by accident.

24) Not thinking through a design to the very end and it gets ripped to shreds.

25) Forgetting that a presentation board is also a design element.

Edit: User submitted content!

26) Over satisfied with the first design. (by Design Monkey)

27) Sketching the same design over and over again. (by Design Monkey)

28) Making things that can be produced instead of creating “insanely” great products. (by Idris Mootee)

29) Forgetting the goal of design is to improve not just make something different. (by Dave Pinter)

30) Being apathetic to sustainable and green design. (by Dave Pinter)




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Comments

Design Monkey
Dec 26, 07 – 5:46 pm

bad habits of ID No. 26: Over satisfied with the first design.
No. 27: Sketching the same design over and over again.

Nice article you have DT! Happy New year!

DT
Dec 26, 07 – 7:43 pm

Hi Design Monkey,

Thanks that is fantastic! Thanks!

Idris Mootee
Jan 02, 08 – 1:15 am

The wosrse habit of all is when an Industrial Designer stops thinking that his/her mission is to create “insanely” great products rather than makign things that will be produced.
This is a great blog.

DT
Jan 02, 08 – 7:39 am

Hi Idris,

Thanks for your comment and for visiting. I myself enjoy visiting your blog.

interaction design
Jan 04, 08 – 12:29 am

Sweet list, could be a ‘don’t do list’ in each industrial design studio! Thanks for your post!

Niels.

michael von klein
Jan 07, 08 – 3:34 am

Thanks! very helpful for all designers ! I publish it im my studio !!

Dev
Jan 07, 08 – 4:21 am

I’m guilty of most of those! New Year resolution time!

DT
Jan 07, 08 – 7:51 am

Hi guys,

Thanks for the great comments, I hope the list can help and perhaps be a little tongue in cheek as well! Please do post it on your websites/blogs if you have any.

Please keep do in touch?

Andrew Reynolds
Jan 07, 08 – 11:16 am

This will help lots of industrial designers realize
the bad habits that they are doing. But then, not all of the designers are like that. I have lots of friends who are designers and they’ve been doing great job! :)

DT
Jan 12, 08 – 7:27 pm

Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your comments and please keep in touch.

Dave Pinter
Jan 13, 08 – 12:03 am

Two more overlooked points:

Forgetting the goal of design is to improve not just make something different.

Being apathetic to sustainable and green design.

DT
Jan 15, 08 – 7:48 am

Hi Dave,

Thanks for dropping by and leaving your wonderful comments. I will add them to the growing list. Please keep in touch.

David
Jan 18, 08 – 7:54 pm

Your all full of contradictions! You seem more committed to corporate lackeys than anything else. Record keeping, time management, inter-departmental communication? Where all still adults here, right? Besides, I don’t think “Design,” or even “Art,” works a nine-to-five to satisfy any of this.

For example:

28) Making things that can be produced instead of creating “insanely” great products.

But, then again …

21) Forgetting that there are costs impacts to design decisions.

Also …

29) Forgetting the goal of design is to improve not just make something different.

But then again …

12) Forgetting to compromise.

What do you expect someone to do, hold a board meeting? The Designers do what they find suitable - it’s called experience!

Your also very redundant and impersonal …

9) Not understanding that a design is not theirs but the company’s.

10) Getting too emotionally involved in their designs.

I don’t like any of it. Your saying, “Yeah, get inspired and do ‘insanely’ great work, but don’t put yourself into the project emotional - but be ‘inspired’!”

This whole list comes down to just one rule:

12) Forgetting to compromise.

DT
Jan 18, 08 – 9:59 pm

Hi David,

Thanks for your comments. I think you might have misunderstand the intention of this post. It is meant as a list of 25 possible bad habits industrial designers may or may not have. Also this list does not signify that there is one designer with all of the above habits. More often than not it is a mix and match of different habits that a designer has.

However I would like to address thepoints that you highlighted:

You seem more committed to corporate lackeys than anything else. Record keeping, time management, inter-departmental communication? Where all still adults here, right? Besides, I don’t think “Design,” or even “Art,” works a nine-to-five to satisfy any of this.

Actually that is an incorrect assumption. Having worked in both a consultancy and corporate environment I have experiences and seen designers in a non-corporate environment display the worst of habits. On the contrary in a corporate environment, there often have strong design systems and processes whose sole purpose is to weed out bad habits.

You also argue that there are contradictions for example:

28) Making things that can be produced instead of creating “insanely” great products.

But, then again …

21) Forgetting that there are costs impacts to design decisions.

Why cant “insanely” great products have good cost controls? You will be surprised to know that Apple has some of the hardest cost targets that they give vendors. How else do you think they make so much margin and hence profit on their products?

29) Forgetting the goal of design is to improve not just make something different.

But then again …

12) Forgetting to compromise.

What do you expect someone to do, hold a board meeting? The Designers do what they find suitable - it’s called experience!

I don’t quite understand what you are saying. But I will try to take a stab at it. What does compromising have to do with improving products? In my mind I see it as giving in to, for example, engineering on a lesser issue, but holding firm on a more important issue such as usability. This is a issue of negotiation, so compromising is not all about just giving in. This is really one of the biggest reasons why products fail.

Your also very redundant and impersonal …

9) Not understanding that a design is not theirs but the company’s.

10) Getting too emotionally involved in their designs.

I don’t like any of it. Your saying, “Yeah, get inspired and do ‘insanely’ great work, but don’t put yourself into the project emotional - but be ‘inspired’!”

I think again you misunderstand. This is an example of 2 extremes. The point here is that designers should not get to a point of being so emotionally attached to a product that they stubbornly refuse to give in and the product fails because a designer does not see the problem as he/she was clouded by emotional attachment. The right thing to do here, is to decide what is in the best interests of the company.

Designers always get emotionally involved in their designs, and I have never seen one that did not. But the point here is as you say, we are all adults here, and the mature designer is the one that knows which battles to fight and which to lose so that the war is won and the design is produced as closed to the original intent as possible.

Mohammad T. Tayeb
Mar 05, 08 – 1:43 am

I agree with all the above…

accessible website design
Apr 15, 08 – 12:44 am

I have to constantly remind myself of 9,10, and 12.

Its hard though since we put so much time into our designs. You can’t help but feel attached.

H-ART Pink Maniacs
Apr 23, 08 – 4:49 pm

[…] designsojourn.com , a nice design blog with a lot of interest articles) 1) Looking at other products for […]

Raghuraj Ananthoj
Apr 29, 08 – 7:03 pm

Hi,

This is really a good article to publish, the matter of fact I wouldn’t call all of them bad. However few of them are really important to be noted as bad habits and often it has been that I have found and spoke to designers about their creation of artefacts but alot them fail to understand few things and I would like to add few more points,which are the following…

1. Not understanding the form- styling clues derived or inspirations incubated in the design are appropriate to their form creation.

2. Failing to understand the brand philosophy of the company, which is not cited in the product.

3. Not sharing the knowledge and work with fellow designers, which fails to build a good relationship between them.

4. Avoiding critics, which are important to understand and improve the current design and other product features.

Overall i feel that the list would continue…good work DT.


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