Learning Materials Shopping trolley - Issues The shopping trolley programme highlights the following issues in design for retail environments: the challenge of designing a product that reconciles two seemingly opposing requirements - in this case, a trolley which steers precisely yet also shifts sideways the difference between inventors, who are concerned primarily with devising new things that didn’t exist before, and designers who have a broader role in creating the relationship between object and use the importance of customer feedback in terms of persuading a company to give a new design a more detailed assessment (‘the customer is always right’) the need for a point-blank refusal by the designer to accept defeat in developing any new product the importance of safety and other user considerations in the busy and intense environment of the retail store the importance of thinking laterally in design to draw examples and expertise from other areas, in this case applying the handling control of sports car engineering to a shopping trolley. Keywords engineering design fitness for purpose inventors function ergonomics shopping stability testing users Many of the above keywords are explained further in Channel 4's jargon-busting A to Z of design terms and design concepts. Click on the Channel 4 logo at the top of the page to visit the site.