What Are the Different Types of Industrial Design Jobs?

Industrial design technology is a wide field that covers many areas of industrial and product design. Within this wide area are other smaller fields that are more like niche areas that are demarcated from the broader field of industrial design. People who study industrial design usually choose their specialty from any of the particular subfields within the larger field, and as such the industrial design jobs are drawn from those subfields. Some of the industrial design jobs include automobile design, equipment design, consumer product design and plant design.

Just like the name suggests, automobile design in the context of industrial design is targeted toward the development of concepts related to the design and production of vehicles. This includes the development of the aerodynamic attributes of vehicles — the designing of modern and unique vehicles that reflect the ideals of the brand behind the vehicles. For instance, some vehicle manufacturers might have ideas regarding concepts they would like to implement into their vehicles. Where this is the case, they could contract the services of automobile designers who will fully develop and implement the concepts, taking them from mere ideas to tangible products that will reflect both the design aspects and the physical technology aspects.

One of the most common parts of industrial design jobs is consumer products design, an area of industrial design that deals with the everyday products people use for different purposes, ranging from personal products to more formal and impersonal products. The products may also range from personalized products to the more ubiquitous mass-produced products. In this type of industrial design, the aim of the designer is always to fulfill a need in the market or to improve on products that already exist in the market. Sometimes the industrial designers who specialize in this field use their own initiative to identify the need and develop the concept, or they may work for a particular company in order to develop specified products. They may do this by conducting consumer surveys in order to find out areas in which there is a gap in the market, or they may use more creative methods.

Another inclusion in industrial design jobs is the area of plant design. The plants in this type of industrial design refer to industrial plants where different types of manufacturing processes occur. An example of a plant that may be designed under this category of industrial design jobs is something like a refinery.