Aesthetic - The term typically used to describe the look and feel of the product.
Brand - The brand is the name or title, probably (but not always) that of its manufacturer, under which the product is marketed. Brand values are often expressed in the design of the product.
Brief - The design documents that encapsulate all of the 'specification' (see below) and to which the design team will work.
CAD (Computer Aided Design) - The workhorse of both engineer and designer. Ranging from traditional 2D drafting to high-end 3D modelling of both surfaces and solids.
Concept - A relatively unproven early proposition for the idea of the product, either sketched or modelled.
Ergonomy - The science of the interface between people and products, encompassing the gathering and interpreting of anthropometrics data, testing and evaluation to facilitate ease of use.
Interaction design - The consideration and design of the interface, whether mechanical or electronic, between user and product.
Models
- Finished model - Non-functioning model of the proposed design, exact in every detail, replicating what the final manufactured product will be like.
- Foam model - These range from the 'roughed out by hand' early manifestations of a concept, to more finished 'machined from CAD' models that are quite accurate.
Prototype - Functional model of the proposed design for testing and evaluation. Prototypes vary in quality depending upon their purpose.
Proof of principle (POP) prototype - Prototype to prove out functional innovations, often in isolation. POP models or prototypes rarely replicate the final product appearance.
Product identity - Identity, or character, are words often used to describe the look of a product, or the way it behaves, especially in the context of the competition.
Product strategy - Defining and agreeing the context for the product, its intended market, price and the investment necessary to realise it.
Rendering - A 2D image of what the concept will look like. Sometimes done by hand using traditional media, or using Photoshop. Increasingly these are output from 3D CAD systems as photo-realistic images.
Research
- Design research - Any research focused on clarifying the context for a new design that may influence its outcome. This might encompass user research, market research or trend research.
- Market research - Research into the product's market, which can take many forms. It can scope the existing market (who's doing what, what are they offering, which are the major players, where do they sell, and at what price?). It can measure consumers' interest, propensity to buy and positive and negative factors (usually called quantitative research because it provides numbers around which marketing plans can be organised). It can gauge how consumers feel about new or existing products by talking to carefully selected groups of consumers, called focus groups (this kind of research is usually called qualitative research because it elicits subjective emotional reactions).
- Trend research - Research into the cultural background to a product or market sector, its current design attributes, the lifestyle factors which influence it, and the importance or unimportance of resulting design trends and their likely development.
- User research - Research focused on better understanding how the user interacts with the product and what kind of people use it. This research is usually done by the design team and may involve talking to users in their home and observing what they do (sometimes called ethnographic research).
Specification - Defining the technical parameters for the product, its functionality, cost, performance and likely manufacturing processes.