Product Design and its Role in Innovations
Product Design and its Role in Innovations
It could be called an unwritten law or a fundamental principle, but it is a fact that innovation comes from people with new ideas, developing new solutions to old problems. Innovations stimulating the invention of new solutions and the development of new products occur when there is progress in the general intelligence of people in a country, and this inevitably has an overall effect on its prosperity. The impetus for the development of product innovations, which is noticeably reflected in the rise of the respective economy, can occur through intensive development activities in companies, as well as in situations where a product designer comes up with a new idea for a product. Product design as a process helps the idea to smoothly transition to designing, and subsequently to product development, with one single goal – technology transfer and implementation. In addition to a process, it is also a real sequence of actions that can establish a connection between the “Idea” phase, with the “Project” phase, and be directed to the “Product Development” process. Product design participates and interacts with the real market and consumers, otherwise everything remains at the level of an idea, or framed and hung on the wall in the form of a certificate of intellectual property, which will simply be observed “with admiration for itself”. It is important to emphasize that the possible directions for upgrading product innovation must necessarily bear the main features of potential market realization. In this context, one must realize the realistic prerequisites in an economy and its market environment, especially in smaller countries, and how to make it more attractive to customers from all over the world, as well as joint activities with other companies. The main possibilities are: product diversification of companies; widespread development of all kinds of products and product innovations; entering previously unsuspected markets; presenting local companies as new opportunities for customers from all over the world, who are constantly looking for alternative and better quality products; stimulating the business environment towards a tangible increase in the quality of products and striving to maintain it; working together with subcontractors outside the local economy when setting up large-scale and mass production; prioritizing development activities over production, in order to attract investments in the local economy; protecting various types of intellectual property and creating prerequisites for granting licensing rights – be it partial or exclusive; equally important, no less significant – forming businesses aimed at developing real physical products with high added value. Most product designs fall into one of two categories of innovation: innovations aimed at key innovations and the search for solutions to problems, their optimal upgrading and improvement, and this definition often includes utility models; or innovations aimed at inventions, seeking completely new conceptual solutions, ingenious combinations of functions (multifunctional and modular structures) and changes in operating principles. For both types of innovations, the principle of knowledge transfer from one field to another fully applies. The role of product design in innovation is an essential part of the creation of the so-called “product innovations”, because they are the factor that provides this healthy business environment related to the development of new and competitive products. All this inevitably leads to a completely new interpretation of product design. Product design and its application as a process is clearly related to the economic health of production sectors in various fields and industries. Therefore, the design approach is important in the following cases: when developing an improved product that is sufficiently competitive to those already on the market; when developing a completely new and unknown product on the market, but oriented towards a strictly profiled market niche and target group of customers; when developing inventions or utility models, so that they have a real chance for technological transfer, and not sink into the abyss of millions of intellectual property without a purposeful designing, development strategy, implementation in production and commercialization. The search for new products occurs when the market has the opportunity to explore the design of products that try to solve a given problem and are ready to be useful to people. One of the alternatives in product innovation is multifunctionality, which is not always successfully achieved, but must be analyzed and exploited intensively as a theme, due to the huge range of market opportunities. It relies on integrating product complexity into the design structure through multifunctional solutions, presented with the help of appropriate transformation of modules, sets and additional accessories to them. These are products with a specific appearance that is adaptable to the peculiarities of everyday life and its surrounding environment, flexible to human needs and the characteristics of the target group to which they belong – gender, age, geographical location, educational qualification, income, marital status, social status, cultural affiliation, aesthetic preferences, etc. This expands not only the innovative approach, but also the social range of product exploitation, stimulating the noticeably changing physical and mental needs of people.
“Everything is invented, but few things are designed well” – author’s interpretation
