generatewhatsnext

During my time at LEGO, GM and Black & Decker I witnessed cycles of friction toward our ID process followed by seemingly random openings in the floodgates of creativity. Tracing it to its source showed me that even the slightest changes in key-stakeholder & executive positions led to snowballing effects downstream. When a new person stepped into the roles that affected our jobs, we were prepared to either weather the storm or jump into the raging river while it lasted. Each time, we hoped for a cooperative person who might be appreciative of the creativity we offered and the innovation that could follow, but sometimes the person who'd taken the reigns was the opposite. That made life hard. If your creativity and your quest to introduce innovative products seems stifled at times, recommend this online course to any of those stakeholders who might be standing in the way while not appreciating your vision! Last semester's students included R&D Directors, a venture capitalist, inventors, a real estate agent, lab engineers and a plant manager among others. The course was highly reviewed because it gave them insight into the value of relying on their creative experts (that's you). When you hear, "creativity is wasteful since it doesn't give me revenue" and "innovation takes how long? - that's too much, let's copy the competitor but change the colors", nudge those folks to give this a try - you'll thank me later!UC Irvine, Continuing Education MGMT X484.1 (2.50 credits) Introduction to Creativity and Innovation https://ce.uci.edu/courses/sectiondetai ... &sid=00096

To the original poster, Similar to the replies above, ME and ID are two distictly different disciplines. Depending on the industry, they complement and rely upon one another - because you're fully engrossed in an ME program, expect to hear that ME is the way to go but it's all about where your passion lies. As an industrial designer, I worked with lots of MEs, EEs, MBAs, graphic designers, plant engineers, quality engineers, etc and each discipline contributes a specialty. While Mechanical Engineers make stuff work, the Industrial designer sits squarely between Engineering and Marketing and the designer is charged with being aware of and sensititve to both the Engineering package and the goals of Marketing (and Program Management). I chose ID long ago because the combination of aesthetic, art, science and salesmanship catered to my talents. Find your passion and your career will follow.

Thanks for asking a very important question - and one that can always use some clarification! Universal Design is a very broad objective where the goal is to enable the abilities of everyone when thinking through the inevitable uses and interactions of a product. There are sub-categories of design that have, in the past, been efforts toward the goal of Universal Design, but most of those sub-categories (transgenerational, accessible, global, etc) came about as a result of specific user needs. After decades of design refinement and the ever-merging sharing of communication, Universal Design has come about as the ultimate goal for designing a product for people. The link below is a presentation we first gave in 2002 to students and the design staff of Black & Decker. It's significance and importance has only grown stronger since. Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions. http://dl.dropbox.co...rsal_design.pdf

To the original poster - I just ran across this forum so forgive my late response. My company deals with IP often, as it is a piece of our development process. There are several considerations in your case; 1. Patent infringement might be a better focus rather than patent protection, since, as you stated, you're not messing with the basics (ie, no novel ideas being introduced that aren't already in the marketplace). If the product category could have utility patents in force (possibly used on the commercial offerings with which you want to compete) then you might want to pay for a utility patent search just to be safe - this is completely separate from the topic of design patents...and since you intend to deviate from the design aesthetic commonly offered, you shouldn't need to worry about infringing on design patents. To the moderator's point, it would be useless to apply for a design patent unless you are introducing a unique VBL that will have characteristics or methods of manufacture that are proprietary and contribute to the design.