Colloquia

Summary

Product Design Languages (PDLs) play an important role in ensuring consistent, recognisable, and meaningful appearances in a brand’s product portfolio. While design agencies, like Dynteq, often design multiple products for the same brand, these projects are approached on a project-by-project basis. Because of this, a structured method to translate a brand’s identity into aesthetically consistent, recognisable and meaningful products is lacking. Dynteq wants to develop this structured method for their PDL projects, where PDLs are designed for their closest partners. The objective of this thesis is to develop this structured method as a toolbox for Dynteq’s PDL projects.

This thesis followed the Design Research Methodology, where, after literature and empirical analyses, a prescriptive method could be created and tested through two case studies. The first case study was conducted at a start-up, focusing on testing and improving the methodology and tools design a PDL for a brand. The second case study used the improved methodology and toolbox to test it to understand the workability of the toolbox with one of Dynteq’s designers.

Resulting of this thesis, a project approach and a corresponding toolbox were developed with all tools and materials needed to design a PDL in a PDL project for Dytneq’s closest partners. The toolbox contains prepared sessions, canvases, and templates for the five phases of a PDL project at Dynteq: 1. Kick-off, 2. Analysis, 3. Strategy, 4. Documentation, 5. Presentation. The key of the PDL project is to understand the interplay between the brand’s intent, their products, and the brand image, so a strategy can be created that aligns the brand’s product design with their brand intent and image. 

The toolbox enables Dynteq’s designers to do PDL projects efficiently and consistently while fostering the sense of ownership by their partners. This thesis contributes to design theory by translating abstract concepts of branding and product semantics into a practical methodology forthe development of product design languages.