All products have a design!

The design is the structure, shape, size, surfaces, and colours the product has been given. For the most part, a construction engineer or a designer has decided on these characteristics. This makes it the construction engineer or designer’s decision how the product is to interact with people and in situations throughout its service life.

Design activities in development projects are performed to ensure that the developed products are provided with qualities that reach beyond the immediate technical qualities. Users and other interested parties place increasingly higher demands on products.

Even high-technological products are expected to possess qualities that meet our emotional needs and qualities, which make the products easy to understand, operate and use.

At IPU, it is a natural part of the development process to consider and include design activities while uncovering the qualities that will determine the success of the product.

Identifying the principal qualities of the product is always done as a collaborative effort between the clients, IPU and one or more industrial designers.

Two archetypical IPU projects include design activities
In some projects, IPU takes on the role of industrial designer, and the client is responsible for the remaining project. IPU challenges and interacts with the development team that has been established at the client company. This way the client can be sure to have a partner who challenges and supports them in their development project, and who assume co-responsibility for monitoring and promoting the principal product qualities, which are to ensure that the product is able to meet the needs of users and other stakeholders.

The other archetypical project is development projects, where a large portion of the responsibility for the project and propulsion lies with IPU. In this type of project, the industrial designers are included early on in the project, and they track the project up until its completion. If, in the process, a need arises for actual design heavy sub-tasks, they are separated along with the technical and technological sub-tasks.