The incorporation of user centered design and Industrial design

Traditional Industrial Design (TID) has been an important aspect in the NPD process within the last decades. User centered design (UCD) is a growing research field for product innovation, starting from the end of 20th century. An NPD process needs support from both design knowledge and research methodologies. Both TID and UCD focus on user´s perspective when doing multi-disciplinary work together. They provide skills and methods for designing the style and usability, and balancing the users need and reality. The skills from TID help design expression and realization to communicate efficiently with other participants by informative images and real prototypes. The skills from UCD help the idea generation and opportunity discoveries by facilitating workshops and conducting interview with participants. TID and UCD represent different perspectives of the subjective and the objective respectively. Their methodologies are essential for a designer to successfully come to a fruitful design solution, and at the same time the project improves the methodologies of TID and UCD through a reflection process.