Product Development: Art or Science?

By Michael Newman, Lead Product Engineer, Launchpad

Is product development an art or science? It’s both, and the process can’t be complete without touching on both aspects.

Product development encompasses many different activities and disciplines and it takes both creativity and calculations to create a product.

Your smart phone looks and feels like it does because an industrial designer envisioned it. Industrial design is essentially responsible for how something looks.  It’s the reason your cellphone looks the way it does: the curved edges, the way it comfortably fits in your hand, and the reason why buttons are where they are.

Industrial design marries art: designing something that is visually appealing and ergonomic to use, with science: having an understanding of what is feasible so that designs can be realized and produced. Once an overall concept of the device is conceived, a team of engineers then figures out how to elegantly place the batteries, circuit boards, connectors, buttons, cameras, speakers, and screen inside so that everything fits, functions, and most of all can actually be manufactured in mass quantity.

Once the aesthetics are conjured, applied science then determines how the phone software functions and defines how your cellphone communicates with the cell towers, relays your text messages and allows you to check your social media feeds.

A saw-toothed jet engine reduces engine noise.

And sometimes aesthetics marries engineering in a beautiful way.  You may have noticed on newer jets, the futuristic-looking saw toothed shape on the back of the engine. The reason for the shape is not because someone thought that engines were boring and need to look more visually appealing.  

This feature actually reduces engine noise by more efficiently mixing the hot engine gases with the cooler fan gases reducing turbulence and effectively making the engine quieter. These features look like they do because their design is driven by equations and the physics of fluid mechanics; however the result is a very visually appealing.

Overall, advances in science will allow sleeker, more compact, more efficient, safer designs while designers will push the advances in science as they pose the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” question.