The process of industrial design encompasses a very wide area of consideration due to the fact that it involves the design of products in different areas ranging from industrial machinery and the industrial plant itself to automobiles and consumer products. As such, innovative industrial design involves the sort of efforts applied by industrial designers toward achieving innovative projects. Industrial designers can achieve innovative industrial design by using their own initiative to discover open areas in the market where they can apply their creativity and technical skills. They can conduct market research and consumer surveys to find areas in which they can use their skills as well as improve already existing designs.
One of the methods of innovative industrial design is through the process of making concerted efforts aimed at discovering areas in the market where designers can apply their skills. This means of achieving innovative industrial design requires a lot of patience and interaction with people in order to find out the sort of requirements they may have regarding certain products. For example, an industrial designer who wishes to develop products for medical doctors, specifically surgeons, would have to interact with surgeons to find out the kind of tools they wish to use, or tools they believe will improve their accuracy while performing their professional obligations to their patients. In this scenario, the industrial designer will use a mixture of the knowledge gained from interaction with such professionals, his or her own creative talents, and technical expertise to develop a unique product that will address the identified need.
Another way in which industrial designers can achieve innovative industrial design is by specifically conducting consumer surveys regarding products in the market with the aim of finding out the opinion of consumers regarding those products, including any areas of discontent. For instance, if the product is a vacuum cleaner, the consumer survey could ask consumers to rate the vacuum cleaner based on certain criteria that will give the designer an inkling of areas of improvement needed. Some of the consumers might have issues regarding ergonomic aspects of the vacuum cleaner in which case the industrial designer could apply innovative industrial design to develop an alternative vacuum cleaner with improved ergonomic aspects. The designer could also study products that already exist in the market with the aim of improving on such products.
