How to Design for Utility and Usability: Understanding Design

Utility means an item, space or other type of design is utilitarian: easy to use. Utility has various components, which include durability, maintainability, repairability, safety, ergonomics, manufacturability, affordability, efficiency, user-friendliness and usability.

Join Prasad Boradkar, a professor emeritus of industrial design at Arizona State University, as he discusses 10 components of utility in the field of design.

In this video, you’ll learn what each of these components mean and how each one contributes to designing beautiful, usable and sustainable products. Boradkar talks about the design of Swiss army knives, automobiles and prescription medication bottles to give you a better understanding of each aspect of utility.

About Understanding Design:

Understanding Design is an educational series of online design courses about the fundamentals of design. The series delves into how great designers think and how the design process works with case studies of many iconic items. We interview professional designers from a range of disciplines about how they incorporate beauty, utility and sustainability into the design work they do.

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About ASU:
Recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the country’s most innovative school, Arizona State University is where students and faculty work with NASA to develop, advance and lead innovations in space exploration. ASU graduates more than 20,000 thinkers, innovators and master learners every year. Take a deeper look at how ASU is building the next generation of leaders at https://www.asu.edu/about.

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