<p>So I believe that the future job that I'm going to want is going to be in product development. Now there is Industrial design, which i would like but i dont seem to have the art skills to get it. So my question is, is product development engineering a sub catagory of industrial engineering? This would mean i would get the industrial engineering degree but have my focus on the product development side of industrial engoineering, and would a minor in art and design (industrial design) help my chances of getting a product development job?</p>
<p>Mechanical Engineering is more suitable for product development. If you focus on design and development, I think.</p>
<p>when i say product development i’m thinking like innovative technology that is used by everyday consumers, modern items like toys tools phones sporting goods, stuff like that, thats the kind of stuff i want to design and develop</p>
<p>Mechanical encompasses so much that you would not expect and entails a lot of design. It would be a good fit for a would be designer of any sort. IE’s, from what I have been shown, do not normally design the whole gambit. We are more along the lines of DFM (design for manufacturing), in which we make in which we look at ways to make parts quicker, easier to hold/assemble, to be consolidated, and so on. IE’s make things/processes better/leaner/more efficient.</p>
<p>There is no product design focus of Industrial Engineering. That’s not what IE is. The closest you’d get is focusing in Ergonomics, but as others said, it makes more sense to do MechE.</p>
<p>Kind of - the HCI/HFE/Ergonomics IE focus will give you the right analytical skills to rip apart someone’s design and tell them why it vacuums wind, or whether it’s good, but it won’t generally give you the **design ****skills **to design it yourself. With enough experience you can do it at the wireframe level pretty well but not at the polished artwork level. </p>
<p>Case in point, when I wear my HFE hat I use Altia and other modeling tools to design (relatively roughly) and simulate screens for some of our products or prototypes. I work with Industrial Designers to make sure the interface looks professional, perfect, etc etc. I could not do a lot of their job (the visual / creative part) and they can’t do a lot of mine ( clinics/storyboards, usability experiments, design their interaction and flows, and simulate it to iteratively arrive at the desired design). You basically need two sets of skills. I’m OK with Photoshop or Rhino but nowhere near my designers. </p>
<p>Designing physical products you interact with is even harder because you have to deal with the ability to build them on top of everything else. That’s usually mechanical engineering.</p>