Is manageability a marketing issue for the designer?

Abstract

In order to gain some insight into the importance designers attach to the good manageability of a product, a study has been made of 37 articles from the following design periodicals Design (UK), Form (FRG), Form und Zweck (GDR) and ID (USA). It was found that remarks about the handling of products were in general global but served to reinforce the quality image of the product. A further study has been made of 20 masters graduation projects of students from the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) to gain insight into the development of handling requirements during the design process. The actual contents of the requirements depended largely on the designer and varied from direct applicability to global intention. Generally the designer did not give the origin of the requirements. In about half of the cases the designer used the requirements to evaluate the product.

Keywords:

• Designers
• Design process
• Marketing ergonomics
• Product handling.