Understanding Industrial Design

Praise for Understanding Industrial Design

“The most difficult and interesting problems of the 21^st century won’t be solved by apps alone. Software might be eating the world, but it’s the hardware mouth doing the chewing. As the boundary between digital and physical grows ever blurrier, more UX designers will have to consider more than just a 2D screen to do their jobs. This book connects the dots between interaction and industrial design in clear, thoughtful prose with vivid examples. Even if you don’t design hardware (yet), its timeless insights and principles culled from decades of physical products can’t help but make your designs better. Get this book.”

—DAN SAFFER, AUTHOR OF MICROINTERACTIONS

“Industrial design is one of the great design disciplines, and its influence on user experience design is both underestimated and misunderstood. As computing becomes more distributed and the Internet of Things becomes the dominant context for UX design, it’s increasingly important for all UX designers to become literate in the principles of industrial design, to incorporate it into their practice, and to understand its core ideas to work on teams with industrial designers. This book is a great and readable introduction to the intersection of ID and UX, written by designers with years of experience in both.”

—MIKE KUNIAVSKY, AUTHOR OF SMART THINGS

“This wonderful book, full of elaborate and detailed design examples, represents an important step in the evolution of the field of interaction design. The principles within are inordinately useful. It’s a must-have for the bookshelf for communication, industrial, interaction, and system designers who are practicing design today.”

—JODI FORLIZZI, PROFESSOR OF HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

“Great product design needs to consider so much more than functionality and usability; it is also about emotions, materials, pleasure, manufacturability, and sustainability, to name just a few other topics. This book is a journey through different perspectives on design that are often overlooked, but that matter so much for great products.

Especially given the IoT, where the digital and physical experiences of products become much more intertwined, Understanding Industrial Design is a must-read for any designer, developer, or entrepreneur working on a product with physical touch points.

The book plays another important role: it fosters mutual understanding and deeper collaboration of the all too often separated digital and physical design practices.”

—MARTIN CHARLIER, CO-AUTHOR OF DESIGNING CONNECTED PRODUCTS

“An essential read for any interaction designer or UX professional who wants to understand the history, role, and responsibilities of Industrial Design.”

—TOM METCALFE, DESIGNER AND TUTOR