Co-evolution of design research and industrial development: empirical insights from European manufacturing companies

Journal article, 2025

While many studies have analysed societal and technological trends, what these imply for product development practice is less clear. However, engineering design research has typically responded to existing challenges in industrial practice, instead of looking forwards to create tools and methods in parallel with technological developments. This paper reports on the findings of a three-stage process with 12 interviews and two workshops, in 2018 with ca 50 participants and 2021 with ca 100 participants. Experienced engineers working on complex engineering products and engineering design researchers reflected on developments in engineering, which were analysed from the perspective of how they would affect design practice. The paper summarises trends the participants identified in manufacturing, energy, transport, digitisation, product design and product development practice; and highlights differences in expectation between 2018 and 2021, in particular around the speed in which sustainability policies and changes to work practice are adopted. The paper analyses the interaction of trends, pointing to the increasing interaction of products with each other and with services, and the implications of the rapid advances in digitalisation, which increase the need for disciplinary integration. The paper ends with a discussion of research questions arising from the analysis in this paper.