Design Research experience for Product Design innovation

This paper, through an applicative case study, reflects on the new frontiers of Product \nDesign and Design Research applied to products, definable as “technical industrial products”, \nthat are usually either invisible or only accessible to specialized operators. Such products today \nchange their meaning in a market that’s evolving towards the digital world, being similar to \ncommodities. These are often tied to a technical and regulatory dimension that limits their \ninnovation, in both form and usage. What’s the role of design in these cases? How, through design, \ncan these products and their companies’ identities be defined? How can a multi-national \ncorporation, having dozens of brands and several thousand products settled through the years, \ngenerated through additive logic and continuous brands acquisition, be distinctly recognized \non the market? \nThis paper describes the development of an original Design DNA and Design Language \nthat, starting by analyzing the corporate product ecosystem (circa 6000 unique references for \nover 80.000 catalogued variants), identifies a renovation process of corporate products capable \nof granting brand recognizability without intervening on structural elements or already \nexisting production processes.This activity has followed a co-design process that involved the \nbrand’s EMEA management, with a dedicated international staff that worked actively together \nwith the team of professors and researchers, in a coaching and learning process. This kind of \nactivity, other than producing meaningful results in building the given objective, constituted \nas many training and team building moments on subjects such as design thinking and design \nmanagement.The case study intends to reflect on the strategic value of both design and design \nresearch; this can contribute to the development of businesses even without actually developing \nany new product, acting on strategic matters1 to enhance what already exists, while at the \nsame time defining coherent and proactive guidelines for the future