DiD - Digital Industrial Design

Abstract

Digital Industrial Design (DiD) is an approach to product development in which industrial/product designers undertake all form-giving activities digitally (no pens/paper/foam or direct interaction with physical material). The key areas of DiD innovation are during Concept Generation and Phase 4 of Design Development where less conventional methods have been proposed and appraised through action research that employed designs for an Internet telephone handset. To explore the capabilities of the various methods when designing contrasting product shapes, two stylistic directions were taken for the telephone: ‘geometric’ and ‘organic’.