WORST MISTAKE MADE BY DESIGN STUDENTS- and how to correct it

One thing my teachers said when starting my first classes in product innovation is that your ideas need to be innovative. This would seem to figure, considering in is a degree in product innovation, but I believe otherwise. When learning the basics of product development and design, you should not be too innovative, and here is why.

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Imagine you are drawing a highly detailed rendering of a car. We all know what a car looks like, we all know if a drawing of a car doesn't look right, yet we probably don't know exactly how to draw it properly. If you are drawing a car and your only reference is your imagination, chances are that your drawing will look, well, not exactly like a car does in real life. But what if you were to trace a picture of a car and then use it as reference to draw exactly where the car has shadows and colour? I bet this drawing will look much better than the one where your reference was your imagination... So why should it be any different for learning to design products?

When you first start designing products you will probably (and are told to) come up with your own shapes, concepts and ideas of what your product will look and function like. What would happen if you were to submit a product concept that looked exactly like one already in existence? You will be told to come up with your own ideas. Sure, you will have classes that teach you how to come up with your own ideas, and classes that will give you an understanding of why products are designed the way they are. But you won't have classes where you do the equivalent of the 'tracing a car picture to learn how to draw it' analogy. Instead it would be more like 'This is how to design a product, now come up with your own based on this knowledge'.

So why should you copy other designs instead of coming up with your own? Its simple; the more you know exactly why/ how a product is designed (through copying it...), the better you will be able to understand why it was designed that way. Think about it; If you design a vacuum cleaner that is just like a Dyson one, then you will know you have a well designed vacuum cleaner. Now when you design another vacuum cleaner, (or any other product, for that matter) you will be able to say, "Hey, I know what makes up a good design for a vacuum cleaner. I'm going to apply the aspects that made up the vacuum cleaner's good design to my own designs. Except this time I will focus on improving and adding my own design innovations to it".

I'm not advocating copying other peoples designs for all of your projects, just consider the ideas in this article for the first few projects. I believe it will help you to better understand and strengthen the lessons your design classes are trying to teach. Combine this article's concepts with the concepts of product design taught by your teachers, and I believe you will produce better work and better understand why a product is designed the way it is.

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