Product design vs Industrial design vs Information Design

Each explained in its own terms.

(This post is mainly catering to students or early career individuals who are considering a career in ‘design’ but get overwhelmed by the question of WHICH design)

For each term, I will first give a generalized definition and then go on to show a mock example for each based on my chosen profession of content strategy.

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Starting with 1) Product Design

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Generalized definition: Product design of a business is the design of a singular product. It contains processes involving finding a gap to be filled, creation of a formula for a product to solve said gap, and the testing of the product.

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Mock Order: 3 months’ content required for 6 different marketing communication objectives of a client. ?

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Mock constraints: A team of 5 writers available with a timeline of 3 months to deliver results in each communication objective of client.

Product Design for me: My products are written pieces for different clientele’s diverse brand objectives. Hence product design for me would be how I design the writing itself to fit the needs of each target audience while staying true to the mission vision of the business. The business I am in is the business of writing hence my vision is to fill the need that exists among people with brilliant ideas to put those ideas on paper in a manner that serves their objective. ?

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My product design would include 1) The various content pieces I conclude to produce in order to meet given objectives of client in 3 months and 2) The blueprint of each piece of content. For example, if my first piece of content is an e-book, my ebook’s product design would look something like the image below: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bXdSenJQhgl9iXKv9I_3uRw1bjdvXZT0B0CninVflAU/edit#gid=727293091

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2) Industrial design:

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Generalized Definition: Industrial design is the process of manufacturing a business’s designed product at the volumes required to 1) Be competitive in the market and 2) Consider the resources at hand.

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Industry For me: The industry for me would be the writing market with writers competing to sell their version of the product – writing.

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Industrial Design for me: Creating a process workflow time based chart, or a calendar that includes the number of resources available to me and the types of products required to be manufactured or delivered to the client by me. This must take into consideration lead times and the number of resources available to me. I personally like to design 3 week content sprints, giving myself and my client the flexibility to mould our content strategy based on results. For example: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bXdSenJQhgl9iXKv9I_3uRw1bjdvXZT0B0CninVflAU/edit#gid=0

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3) Information Design:

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Generalized definition: The presentation of derived insights from a business’s data in a manner that best communicates the essence of the data to the stakeholders.

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Information design for me: A comprehensive snapshot of the performance of each resource and each job metric involved in achieving my client’s 6 communication objectives.

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For example: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QGxDkevieHeSHffVNk1XzPIqYzwsSKJa/edit#gid=890740278

I hope this clarified those of you considering up-skilling in Design choose the right career path ahead. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts and any questions, concerns, comments or feedback.

May the force be with you all!