Ways To Better Design Through... / Recommended Reading

Hey all,

as other product designers I am interested in all kind of “ways to better design”, that are based on the following actual marketing perspective:

“Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others.” (Philip Kotler)

To my oppinion it is the designers role to satisfy both - the users AND the marketers needs and wants - through supporting the exchange process by creating / designing products or value. For this reason I would like to know:

Does anyone have suggestions for the latest “reqired readings” on this topic?

Including the folowing:

  • Marketing Management & (Product-) Design
  • Design Management
  • Design Research
  • Design Strategy

Does anyone know institutes, schools or people who do “cutting-edge” academic research in the field between product design and marketing?

Thank you for reading and thank you very much for answering![/i]

Since I doubt any of us still report up through engineering, were all fairly aware of marketing perspectives.The question is how involved in marketing do you want to get? and - as far as ‘cutting edge’ reading you might search the Design Issues indecies.

The question is how involved in marketing do you want to get?

First of all thank you for the quick response. I am already quite deeply involved in both, the commercial practice of product design and marketing as well. For this reason I am also fairly aware that both perspectives have converged within the last decades. Although product design and marketing come from totally diffrent backgrounds they now share almost the same goals: they are both targeting customers needs and try to let them come true.

In commercial practice things have been merged and totally mixed up, but I think, design- and marketing-education, design-theory or methodology have not yet been really connected to marketing. For this reason, I am still searching for the “missing link” between design and marketing in science and education.

Does someone know researchers or publications dealing with the intersection between marketing and product design.

http://www.business.uc.edu/M-Ann-Welsh

look up her publications co-written with Dale Murray, do you have acess to Lexus-Nexus?

Do you have acess to Lexus-Nexus?

No I don’t have access to Lexus-Nexus yet. But it might be worth trying it. Thank you very much for both hints.

These papers might not be exactly what you are looking for, but the references listed in them give plenty of ideas. The first one is definitely worth a look. If you can’t find them anywhere, drop me an email and i’ll see what i can do.
Consumer research as a topic will bring up lots of examples of papers from other industries such as food and drink.
Although the New Product Development processes may not have a 3D product design stage as such, the techniques employed are widely applicable.

Consumer research in the early stages of new product development: a critical review of methods and techniques.
Food Quality and Preference, Volume 16, Issue 3, April 2005, Pages 181-201
Ellen van Kleef, Hans C. M. van Trijp and Pieternel Luning

Role change of design engineers in product development
Journal of Operations Management, Volume 24, Issue 1, December 2005, Pages 63-79
Paul Hong, Mark A. Vonderembse, William J. Doll and Abraham Y. Nahm

Consumer research in the early stages of new product development: a critical review of methods and techniques.
Food Quality and Preference, Volume 16, Issue 3, April 2005, Pages 181-201
Ellen van Kleef, Hans C. M. van Trijp and Pieternel Luning

Role change of design engineers in product development
Journal of Operations Management, Volume 24, Issue 1, December 2005, Pages 63-79
Paul Hong, Mark A. Vonderembse, William J. Doll and Abraham Y. Nahm

I could find both papers quite easily. For others who might be interested, I added the following two links:

http://library.wur.nl/wda/dissertations/dis3881.pdf

http://www.cs.wright.edu/~rhill/EGR_702/RoleChangeArticle.pdf

So far I didn’t have the opportunity to take a closer look, but at first glance I think, it looks very promising. Many Thanks!

look up her > (AnnWelsh) > publications co-written with Dale Murray, do you have acess to Lexus-Nexus

I could not find any publications of A. Welsh and D. Murray so far. So I googled the names and found this article written by Sooshin Choi in wich both names were mentioned:

http://www.dis.uia.mx/conference/HTMs-PDFs/UniversalDesignasBusiness.pdf The buzzword here is: “Universal Design”

After reading this article, it seems as it might be worth trying to track down the articles of Welsh and Murray too.

Does anyone have an idea where I can find publications written by A. Welsh and D. Murray besides in the “LacksNex” thing?

sorry,
valuable information is never free, if your local library has no business databases you may have to buy the journals directly.

state-sponsored colleges have to allow the general public acess to their resources, so try one.

if you can I would call Gravity Tank in chicago. they do a great job of combining the two. Plus the owners teach masters programs in design planning that seeks to bridge design and marketing…IIT in chicago is the school. Plus there is a masters of product development at Northwestern, also chicago area that focuses on a comprehensive strategy to businessize design in a multidis setting. I have a good friend doing the Northwestern program and he loves it.

as far as books, the best book I have read recently is LoveMarks. There are two versions…the first is about the theory of the “LOVEMARK” and the second has case studies.

for me Lovemarks is the book of the decade for design, branding and marketing. our organization has read it…all design dept and marketing and it has had a huge, huge, huge impact on how we are working and organizing ourselves to be effective and cohesive.

pdma.org throught their publication arm, Journal of Product Innovation Mangement, have published on product design and marketing relationship you discuss.

I like the Personal MBA reading list.

http://personalmba.com/