Working with industrial designers 1

[KENAT]

Not sure this is the best forum but seems as good as any and a quick search didn't change my mind.

I had a phone call with an Industrial Designer earlier that we've used a few times previously who ranted about the way we have used their services.

Basically we'll give them the basic product information/envelope etc. and have them come up with some schemes for packaging it to be more aesthetically pleasing and in some cases meet certain ergonomics requirements etc. In one or two cases we've then actually had them do some of the detail design of the covers etc, in other cases we've used their concepts as a starting point and then fleshed the rest out our selves because with the time schedules we usually have we to go to them before everything is fleshed out so changes occur etc.

It seems this latter approach is highly offensive to him. It was like we were somehow undermining his artistic integrity or something. Apparently we should have gone back to him for every little change and paid him the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost without batting an eye lid. Now this guy has done the design of some high profile items which if I said the name you’d all recognize but still. He also started going on about how he was trained in this type of thing or something and how many industrial designers wouldn’t’ put up with it and wouldn’t allow their designs to be changed.

Our products are low volume, though fairly high price. However, 50-100k spread over say a couple of hundred units is still a sizeable chunk.

I can kind of understand that it may be frustrating coming up with something you think is really good then having it butchered by what you perceive as 'amateurs' but most of the 'butchery' is for a good reason driven by some design requirement or another. These products are scientific/industrial metrology instruments not consumer goods so while aesthetics are important they aren't the be all and end all, at least in my opinion.

So is this typical of how industrial designers work, or is our guy a prema donna? Are any industrial designers out there willing to just provide basic concepts for companies to then build on, or do you insist on controlling every little detail?

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[KENAT]

Pierdesign, thanks for your post.

On the 'just the sketch' issue. The thing that makes me have trouble believing this is such an issue is that in another case we got effectively just that.

This was for a 'box of electronics' the packaging and detail design of which was completely outsourced to an electronics packaging design house. One of the first things they did were provide several sketches of different concepts for the 'box' that their ID had done. In their case once we told them which we liked, or I think it may have been aspects of a couple, they went away and finalized the design.

This is what we wanted, just some sketches of ideas for us to then finalize the design. We weren’t expecting fully defined designs with all aspects of functionality fully defined etc. Also, we already had a fairly well developed concept that captured most of the critical functionality and space envelope aspects.

We had a very limited budget (even if doing external ID had been thought of earlier it wouldn't have been much more I suspect) so as I've said before getting them fully involved in an iterative approach/integrated development just wasn't feasible financially.

Some of my posts may have been unclear as you’ve mentioned a few things in your post that don’t follow what happened, but perhaps that’s more evidence of my poor communication.;-)

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