As a profession, industrial design has been affected by different dynamics throughout its
history. One of the dynamics which affected industrial design strongly is the arrival of new
technology. One of the fields in which information technology revolution happened is the
arrival of micro-electronics, particularly in the area of telecommunication. This created an
entirely new area of professional practice which was first named user interface design, but
then developed to become a new professional practice, interaction design.
Although interaction design is a growing profession today, interaction designers often have
to explain what an interaction designer actually does and argue that their specialty is not
something that anyone could do without a formal education both to stakeholders and
clients who buy their designs. Furthermore there still seems to be confusion when the job of
industrial designers and interaction designers are overviewed together.
The aim of this paper is to build a background for role sharing in design processes with a
specific focus on industrial design and interaction design.
Role sharing in design processes is highly related with design practice. Thus the empirical
data for this research has been gathered through two sets of interviews and also a
validating case study based on a product’s design process.
There are significant parts of the design process in which interaction design and industrial
design collaborate. The closest and the most intense collaboration take place in early
phases of design process such as concept generation and creation of design alternatives
which are explored in-depth in the paper.
DRS 2012 Bangkok
