Industrial design, industrial design engineering and design engineering : different perspectives of a PhD in design

It is not unusual, that as soon as you begin to carry out a brief review of theses in design from any database such as Index to Theses [1]; a high number of theses’ titles appear containing the word ‘design’, or claiming in the abstract that their outcome will be based on the creation of a ‘design’. This may mislead the reader to think that all of them are using this word to convey the same meaning. However, a deeper investigation into the content of these theses appears to show that they present subtle, if not striking differences indeed. It is not that they are trying to confuse the reader purposefully; the problem is that the word design can, and is used to convey different meanings depending on different contexts. Thus, although different disciplines use the word design to define their design-based activities, their purposes and design parameters are different, and so are their design outcomes. This issue become more confusing when different researchers from different disciplines use the word design to define different types of design research outcomes. It is then, when the word design, especially as a design outcome, can be subjected to misinterpretation, with the subsequent negative consequences for definition, classification and evaluation purposes. A very representative case of this situation can be found in three well-known design-based disciplines, which boundaries are in some cases blurred, thus making difficult to identify the intrinsic qualities of their respective design parameters and outcomes. These disciplines are: Industrial design, industrial design engineering and design engineering.