Open Access

Martin LuccarelliORCiD

• A premise guaranteeing the successful interdisciplinary teamwork in product design is a mutual understanding of both professional and academic communities of the different design expertise and the role they play in the process. It appears that the open compound word industrial design is open to interpretation in European education. This ambiguity had a negative impact on the labour policies of some European countries, which have labelled some professions with incorrect names. Therefore, this terminological inconsistency urges for clarification within the design community. This work analyses the term industrial design, it presents historical developments in European industrial design education, in particular in Germany and in the Netherlands, and discusses how the education to the industrial design profession was positioned towards product development. This paper suggests that the causes for the observed lack of clarity about the meaning of the term industrial design are of an etymological and disciplinary kind. In order to act as a bridge between the professional and academic communities, universities should create the premises for interdisciplinary collaboration between designers and engineers through standardized communication, ultimately contributing for a sustainable future in both design and engineering education.