With the emergence of new technologies and manufacturing techniques, we must innovate our way of thinking as well, when it comes to product design and manufacturing. These new technologies allow us to think outside the box, and come up with solutions that didn’t seem all that possible or practical before.
This is the core of design thinking. Often described as a “social technology”, design thinking is the blend of the latest tools and technologies combined with a forward way of thinking that delivers insightful solutions to problems both new and old.
Thus, design-thinking becomes the way of the future. It enables us to deal with numerous problems that arise from adverse world circumstances or adapt to the changing market and capricious customer needs and requirements.
It Starts at the Top
Design-thinking starts at the very top of the manufacturing chain. It starts with the very design and the people involved in the process of designing.
One of the greatest pain points between management teams and product design teams is that they often clash due to different ideas about design. Both sides often have valid arguments when it comes to designing a product, but have different solutions to the same problem, stemming from different angles the problem is being viewed from.
The solution here is to educate both teams on the inner workings and insights of the other team. As designers themselves become more knowledgeable of how a business operates, they can deliver solutions that are more in line with the resources their company has. And as the management talks to their designers more, they can understand better the design choices their designers present them and try to allocate resources accordingly.
The Innovation of Interdisciplinary Product Design
Deriving design ideas from disciplines and industries not entirely related to your own has always been a way of coming up with creative solutions.
Take these quality 3D decorative panels for example. They represent the kind of thinking out of the box combined with the latest manufacturing technologies that a modern business needs to strive towards.
In essence, borrowing ideas from other industries can only enrich your own product design experience. Watch how others approach their own problems and learn from their experience. This way, your own horizons broaden, and the insight you gain from others can help you come up with designs that might answer the same problem you had before more efficiently and even be easier to produce and cheaper to invest in.
Final Words
As we said in the beginning, design-thinking is the way of the future. It is a philosophy based not on speculation, but on experience over a long period of time. It brings numerous benefits to every level of business – from management to product design, to manufacturing, to marketing and distribution.
All in all, design-thinking is there to unlock the latent potential hidden in our creative minds – we only have to have the insight to see where that road takes us.