D&T: Rachael Sleight 

Product Design and Material Innovation

Rachael is the Innovation School lecturer in Sustainable Materials and Processes and gave us the last lecture of the D&T tutorial. In her lecture, she tried to raise our awareness of product design and materials innovation. As we all know, Rachael is an external consultant for Stylus, which is a company focusing on innovation research and consulting. And she has already published a great deal of reports on color, materials, and product innovation. Her own fashion brand, Burnbank mainly serve customers in bespoke leather handbags and accessories. And she mentioned that negotiating with clients during the process of product design is also of paramount significance. I really appreciate this point of view because from my perspective, product design often uses brainstorming to better integrate user’s experience. As product designers, we can no longer focus on the beauty of the products we create but consider the systems surrounding the product and how users interact with it. That is to say, discussions with clients need to be paid much attention to.

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Besides, in the process of product design, material design is always an indispensable and important link. To a certain extent, the quality of material design ultimately determines the quality of product design. It is known to us all that our society always changes and develops, therefore materials used in product design also need to make changes and innovations in corresponding to the development of our society, to truly meet the needs and changes of the market, and ultimately continuously improve the actual value of the product. At the same time, the application of materials in product design can fully demonstrate the spiritual symbol of products, but the development of the times can cause changes in people's spiritual needs, so it is necessary to scientifically innovate materials.