If you have been searching for design services for a physical product, you have probably seen both terms used: industrial design and product design. They are sometimes used interchangeably and sometimes used to mean different things. Here is a clear explanation.
Industrial Design
Industrial design is the professional practice of designing products intended for manufacture. The term comes from the industrial era and refers to designing objects that will be produced in quantity, typically using industrial manufacturing processes.
Industrial designers consider the form, function, ergonomics, and aesthetics of a product alongside its manufacturability and cost. A well-trained industrial designer understands how different manufacturing processes constrain and enable design decisions, and makes choices accordingly.
Industrial design typically covers the external appearance and user experience of a product: what it looks like, how it feels to hold, how the user interacts with it. It is distinct from the internal mechanical engineering that determines how the product works.
Product Design
Product design is a broader term that can encompass industrial design but often includes the full design process from concept to production-ready specification. In many contexts, product design refers to the end-to-end process of taking a product from idea to manufacturable reality, which includes industrial design, engineering, and DFM.
In practice, the terms are used differently in different companies and contexts. Some firms use product design to mean what others call industrial design. Others use it to describe a broader scope that includes engineering.
What This Means for You
When you are looking for design services, the important question is not which term the firm uses: it is what they actually do. Can they design something that looks great? Can they engineer it to work correctly? Can they design it so it can be manufactured at the target cost? Do they understand the manufacturing process well enough to make good design decisions?
At Pro-Dev, our team covers industrial design, product design, and engineering as integrated disciplines. We do not separate form from function or design from manufacturability: those decisions are made together because they affect each other.
