Are product design researchers and practitioners on the same page? The way professional product designers view creative design

Purpose: This paper aims to explore professional product designers’ views on creative design and to compare their viewpoints with the related academic literature on product marketing.

Design/methodology/approach: To find the designers’ views on creative design, face-to-face in-depth interviews based on repertory grid analysis and semi-structured questions were conducted with 32 professional and award-wining product designers who mostly design for international producers.

Findings: Although marketing scholars often approach design as a noun – something that can be viewed and analysed as a bundle of attributes, dimensions or characteristics – professional designers view design differently. To them, design is a verb, a problem-solving process through which they meet the challenges consumers have with products. Comparing professional product designers’ views on design creativity with the main topics in the product marketing literature places scholars’ dispositionalism against designers’ situationalism; it also enables marketing scholars to improve their viewpoints on product design and to bring practical problem-solving and design thinking into their research. This also increases mutual understanding between marketers and designers.

Research limitations/implications: This research enhances the knowledge of marketing scholars, marketers and designers about each other’s perspectives on product design creativity, which will improve their mutual understanding and the business-to-business relationship between marketers and designers.

Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first study that has attempted to discover product designers’ opinions on the main topics in the related academic literature.