Hi guys, just wondering about one thing and thought I could pop this question out over here.
People like me, high school students interested in ID and is about to attend ID programs in college might think ID is “making things with clever method”, "make things and then give a presentation"or something else I don’t know.
But I am curious about how people who is already familiar with ID, maybe even an ID worker think about ID.
What would you anwser if someone ask you “What is Industrial Design?”
…
(Sorry this is a weird question, but I really am curious.)
We layout factories 
(J/K, you will get that 1000 times though)
The best thing that i try to do is relate it to something that someone would be familiar with. It will change depending on the situation.
example:
I had to explain it to someone else in college (business major that thought marketing did all R&D work), so I related it to the Xbox controller he was holding. The remote feels, looks, operates, costs and functions based on industrial deign. The form, color, layout, size and other nifty things is due to a designer considering what you as a consumer wants, before you even know it.
thats just my opinion and what I have to do to quickly sum it up to most people.
Even seasoned professors won’t be able to give you a straight answer on this one… nobody knows.
I usually say “its kinda like product design, except we do more stuff”
I say that cause it usually ends a conversation that can last for hours.
Really, ID is a process. A way of thinking about problems (even if theyre not based in the physical realm). The reason its so hard to describe is that everyone’s process is different; based on yourself, your education, your experiences, and your skill sets. Most ID educations, however, try to teach you how to deal with tons of different potential problems, leaving it up to the students to decide how broad or narrow they want their focus.
I know ID’ers who research for months and draw one sketch then build it. I know ID’ers who research for 10 minutes, draw 10 million sketches and build all of them.
Sometimes you make cool things, sometimes you make boring things, sometimes you don’t make anything at all, and sometimes you spend countless hours learning a new skill set because what you want to make doesn’t mesh with the skills you already have.
Its a really f’n hard thing to answer… The Jedi answer is that the path is different for everyone, and you won’t have a complete and total understanding of it until you go through it… and maybe not even then.
Thats my opinion, anyway.
Good answer Spizzy. The path is different for everyone on every project.
I think the simplest and most vague answer is that we imagine and implement future scenarios for living. Using a wide variety of design tools (mainly in research, analysis, and visualization) we learn in a specialized education, we can apply creativity to industry and everyday culture. We collaborate with a number of people to make this happen from end consumers and users to engineers, marketing people, finance, sales, retailers and so on.
I like to call it “intuitive engineering” 