While EEVAM opens the doors to industrial design, industrial design opens doors to the future

Published by EEVAM Technologies on 12/04/202312/04/2023

In the fifth revolution of the socio-productive system, companies need to redefine themselves. That is why industrial design fulfills a fundamental function of cohesion in the entire mechanism of the system.

Industrial designers generally focus on a product's physical appearance, functionality, and manufacturing processes, although they are often involved in much more during the development cycle. All of this ultimately extends the product to its ultimate overall value and the experience it provides to end users.

Industrial Designers Society of America (2019).

Technology can be broadly defined as a set of scientifically ordered knowledge that allows to design and create goods and services that facilitate adaptation to the environment, as well as satisfaction of individual needs and aspirations of humanity. True to its etymology, from the Greek, tekne (skill) and logos (science), the science of skill, it is about the study of the generation of tools capable of achieving an end. An "end", which in this case is defined as "adaptation to the environment, individual needs and aspirations of humanity". As Bigellow already said in 1829, technological innovation can only exist if there is social benefit.

There could be a wide debate -which will not be the purpose of this post- trying to specify what are the needs and aspirations of humanity and its way of adapting to the environment. However, it is obvious that there are not only material aspirations (at least for everyone), and therefore, in order to achieve these means we must carry out an interdisciplinary study that includes the field of social sciences, sciences or applied arts; that is, to develop technology in an interdisciplinary way. This is what industrial design takes care of.

Design is improving people's lives through mass-produced products, or as it could be concluded, making technology. Numerous interest groups are witnessing this finding and are updating their approach to innovation. An example of this is the case of the Oslo Manual, where the concept of social innovation has recently been introduced to refer to any optimization (well materialized through products, services, organization, etc.) with the aim of improving society and not for purely economic purposes for companies. Moreover, prestigious economists such as Porter and Kramer have introduced the concept of "shared value" to refer to an unequivocal purpose between social benefit and economic development of companies, in oder words, they have evidenced the supremacy of business strategy over operational efficiency.

For all these reasons, the more holistic and transversal our knowledge is, the more tools we will have to focus on our own benefit and the progress of others. Therefore, noting that in the Renaissance Leonardo Da Vinci silenced his qualities as an engineer to stand out as a painter and for many years applied sciences have relegated the arts to oblivion, today we must completely dismiss the toxic fragmentation between disciplines to embrace the product and everything that surrounds it, encouraging a technological humanism that integrates social sciences, applied sciences and arts.

With the cooperation of specialized electronic, mechanical or marketing technologists, EEVAM has begun to use transversal product design techniques in some of its projects. In its first inclusion, the Munari method has been used as the backbone, implementing design thinking tools based on a User-Centered Design for the generation of proposals, more specifically the 121 approach.

Engineers for the Development of Electric Vehicles

First, design needs were defined and each problem was broken down in order to structure all this information with a conceptual map. Once we managed to organize the general information that serves as a brainstorming, we moved on to the incubation phase where we give room to subconscious processes. These ideas will be crossed with data on market trends and references from our potential client (using resources such as mind maps, mooodboard or empathy maps) that we will translate into relevant visual elements to define the aesthetics of our product through the sketching stage. Subsequently, the materials and manufacturing processes offered in the market were studied to determine several proposals that were valued based on certain weighted criteria through the Pugh matrix, in order to decide which option will be the definitive one. Finally, the model has been manufactured and the result verified to conclude that the project has produced a satisfactory solution.

Being a project addressed by a single person, these particular methods of proceeding have been used. However, at specific times, cooperation dynamics have been used to promote the development of ideas, such as the Osborn's Brainstorming (1960). As the discipline of design is integrated into the work team, we will be able to take advantage of the richness of EEVAM's interdisciplinary environment to enhance the company's ability to create. In the fifth revolution, engineers have to challenge ourselves against algorithms, and if there is something in which we can compete, it is in our creative capacity. While EEVAM opens the doors to industrial design, industrial design opens doors to the future.