Bad Habits

25 Bad Habits of Industrial Designers via Design Sojourn. Yikes...

1) Looking at other products for inspiration.

2) Not creating or studying the design brief.

3) Not checking if the concept fulfils the design brief.

4) Spending too much time on the computer.

5) Not improving their sketch communication skills.

6) Not improving their verbal communication skills.

7) Not making a concept model because they were lazy or not wanting to get dirty.

8) Coming to work late.

9) Not understanding that a design is not theirs but the company’s.

10) Getting too emotionally involved in their designs.

11) Not being friends with Engineering.

12) Forgetting to compromise.

13) Not being friends with Marketing.

14) Mistaking arrogance for confidence.

15) Forgetting Industrial Design requires multi-disciplinary skills.

16) Being disorganized in mind and/or space.

17) Poor Time management.

18) Not planning a 3D construction process before doing 3D modelling.

19) Designing in a 3D program.

20) Forgetting to document their work.

21) Forgetting that there are costs impacts to design decisions.

22) Not including draft angles and part lines in 3D models or design files.

23) Forgetting to save work or worst deleting it by accident.

24) Not thinking through a design to the very end and it gets ripped to shreds.

25) Forgetting that a presentation board is also a design element.

Edit: User submitted content!

26) Over satisfied with the first design. (by Design Monkey)

27) Sketching the same design over and over again. (by Design Monkey)

28) Making things that can be produced instead of creating “insanely” great products. (by Idris Mootee)

29) Forgetting the goal of design is to improve not just make something different. (by Dave Pinter)

30) Being apathetic to sustainable and green design. (by Dave Pinter)

The following four are by Raghuraj Ananthoj with some editing on my part.

31) Not understanding if the form inspiration is appropriate to the form being created.

32) Failing to understand the brand philosophy of the company.

33) Not building a good relationship between fellow designers by sharing knowledge and work.

34) Avoiding critics, which can help improve the current design and other product features