Question

Q1: Which Design Lifecycle Stages benefit from having an Industrial Designer on your team? Which one lifecycle stage is the contribution of the Industrial Designer most important? Is the answer different for a Technology Driven Product Development such as Apple?

Q2: Why did Apple choose to CNC machine and laser shape the Macbook Air chassis from a solid aluminum block instead of using a aluminum die cast process?

Answer 1

Ans 1) An industrial designer’s role in the product development process is to establish the design language of a product, as well as the corporate branding and identity. They are a vital element of the process because they have insight into market trends and consumer preferences. The System design phase comes after a good understanding of customer’s requirements, this phase defines the elements of a system, the components, the security level, modules, architecture and the different interfaces and type of data that goes through the system

Ans 2) Consolidation Stage As the product breaks through the market place and is used commonly, the growth rate of the industry is still faster than the rest of economy. No for technology driven product too the growth rate of the industry is still faster than the rest of the economy.Thus, the performance of the industry in general will be more minutely tracked by the performance of the firms that have survived.

Ans 3) Apple choose to CNC machine as when complicated cuts need to be made at various levels and angles on a work piece, it can all be performed within minutes on a CNC machine. Laser shape MacBook Air start with an extruded block of aluminum that is carved out using CNC or "computer numerical control" machines in a process used by the aerospace industry to build mission critical, high precision components.