Preface

A new breed of modern designers is emerging. These non-traditional industrial designers work across disciplines, understand human beings, business and technology thus bridging the gap between customer needs and technological advancement of tomorrow. Whether by using unique manufacturing processes like rapid prototyping and laser cutting or by celebrating beautiful materials like organics, concrete or silicon, they are successfully evolving industrial design according to user's needs and engagement with their product. This book uncovers prospective designer techniques and methods of a new age of industrial design, in which practitioners strive to construct simple and yet complex products of the future.

The nine chapters in this book report on the novel frontiers of the new era of industrial design and how these are being tackled, spanning over the design process, illustration of the use of new technologies in design and the advancement of culturally inspired design.

The first section of the book is on design and new technologies, covering the themes of technology as a determinant of object shape, knowledge-based engineering for supporting design and product instructions in the digital age. The second section deals with culturally inspired design from both a practice and an educational viewpoint. The last section covers several approaches to innovation in the design process, including biologically inspired design, product design with embodiment design viewed in a new perspective, disruptive innovative designs, and an example of the application of TRIZ principles to design.

#### XII Preface

The diverse perspectives taken by the authors of this book ensure stimulating reading and will assist readers in leaping forward in their own practice of industrial design and in preparing new design research that is relevant and aligned with the current challenges of this fascinating field.

#### **Professor Denis A. Coelho**

Human Technology Group (Director) Masters Program in Industrial Design Engineering (Coordinator) Product Development and Prototyping Laboratory (Head) Dept. Electromechanical Engineering, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal

#### **Professor Abir Mullick**

School of Industrial Design College of Architecture Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia United States of America
