The Industrial Designer as Mediator and Semiotic Translator

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Abstract

How far goes the industrial designer’s influence? In an ethnographical research, which took part over the period of 16 months, I delved into the complex world of industrial designers in order to illuminate this question. This research focuses on the various social, cultural and technological “agentic” abilities of the industrial designer. The designer stands in a unique place situated in the midst of the “holy trinity” of the design world, consisted of the designer, the customer (the brad or company) and the user/buyer. However, in contrast to my first impression, the designer was not found out to be a social agent (as in the classical sociological term), but rather an intermediary and a semiotic translator. As an intermediary, the designer tries to juggle the user’s and customer’s needs, hence articulating these in the designed product. The main methods by which the designer acts is by doing ethnographic research, using different modelling stages to decipher the user’s needs, and finally by using semiotic translation to articulate these needs in the designed product . By using these methods the designer acts as a mediator combining the client’s and user’s needs in the 3D object, which in turn manifests the “holy trinity’s” needs.