Where would so many products developed by engineers be without industrial designers?
Without industrial designers, many inventions and products presented to industry would never get off the ground, because no one would fully understand how to even operate the device.
Industrial designers not only make these new devices "user-friendly", but they also make them 'marketable' for business and consumer use.
Brooks Stevens shaped how many inventions and existing products, military or commercial, were marketed and brought into common usage. In many cases, engineers who created new contraptions were the only ones who knew how the device actually worked! By putting a new and 'raw' device in front of someone from the general public or consumer and expecting them to know where the "On" switch was and how to operate it was and is a challenging task.
Brooks Stevens not only made these devices easy to operate by the general public to use, but he made these devices 'fashionable.' Ergo, making them desirable and therefore easier to market and sell to the general public.
He is known for developing the term 'planned obsolescence' and describes the modern industrial designer as such: "an industrial designer in today's business world should be a business man, an engineer and a stylist, and in that direct order."
Stevens is known for re-designing the Allen-Bradley Switchgear box, to make it more easy and safe for operator use. He redesigned military hardware to be used by the public, such as the "Jeepster." But, he mainly, redesigned inventions and existing products to make them more marketable. In one case, adding a window to the front of a Hamilton Dryer made the first electric clothes dryer in 1945 a great seller.
So I ask, what comes first? The chicken or the egg? Is a device mainly developed for the use of something that has presented itself as necessary to the ease, safety and continual workings of the modern world? Or are inventions 'industrially re-designed' mainly for the need of profit by business?
