Hi, Miles,
There doesn't seem to be much literature on this, but there are a few ways to get at what there might be. You've done the first -- query a group such as this. Few of our subscribers seem to know of any literature, but the ideas and viewpoints they offer are a good place to begin.
If I were looking, I'd start with literature that postulates definitions in published accreditation documents, catalogs, national industrial and professions literature, and the definitions of the professional associations.
Another avenue would be to ask that a specialist in your university library help you with a search to identify scholarly and scientific literature from which you can extract definitions.
The nature of different programs means that the definitions shift with relation to national cultures, schools, disciplines, and even the requirements of different programs. In many places, industrial design or product design are located within a faculty or school of design. Elsewhere, they constitute entire faculties -- for example, IASDR will meet this year in Delft, at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.
Swinburne has degree programs in both industrial design and product design engineering. Industrial design covers an array of products at different scales. PDE focuses on the industrial design of products and the engineering of the product and the system needed to manufacture it. PDE is a specialized field, with only 30 such programs in the world: here, it is both a full-fledged design degree, and an accredited engineering degree, so that graduates are both designers and engineers.
While many programs focus on the formal qualities of the designed artifact, an increasing number of programs address the nature of industrial design as a framework for integrated product and service systems moving from identifying a customer need or gap in available products through concurrent design and manufacturing on to sales and service issues related to design and post-sales servicing, ending with re-use or recycling.
The nature of additive manufacturing and new technologies also means that these kinds of programs are increasingly located or co-located in different kinds of faculties or collaborating faculties.
This probably raises more questions than it answers, but it might help in terms of finding the answers you seek.
Yours,
Ken
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Miles Park writes:
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Is anyone aware of any scholarly writing about the preference for the use of the terms 'Industrial Design' or 'Product Design' or otherwise - be it to describe professional practices, educational programs and regional differences? There appears to be a number of posts on such matters on various design forums, and these opinions are important, but is there any work out there that addresses the specifics of each, maps or compares what each term may mean and its differing perceptions in various contexts or locations?
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Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 | Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design
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