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Design Is Everything?
Author(s) -
Ulrich Karl T.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of product innovation management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.646
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1540-5885
pISSN - 0737-6782
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2011.00809.x
Subject(s) - product (mathematics) , product design , context (archaeology) , identity (music) , engineering ethics , field (mathematics) , new product development , key (lock) , computer science , sociology , knowledge management , business , marketing , engineering , aesthetics , paleontology , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , computer security , pure mathematics , biology
This essay attempts to demarcate the industrial practice of product design and situate it in the context of academic research. The term product design presents definitional challenges, as it is used in practice in different ways, and even varies in usage regionally. For this article, product design is “conceiving and giving form to goods and services that address needs.” The activity of product design can be thought of as comprising several key decisions. Because the decisions of product design do not map cleanly to any one academic discipline, the subject has not garnered enough attention in any one field to develop fully its own academic identity. Scholarly research in product design has often been cultivated by the emergence of a methodological paradigm. While several such paradigms are in use, several others offer substantial promise.