Over at Coroflot, there’s a job opening listing for a Milwaukee Tool Staff Industrial Designer. I found the job duties and responsibilities to be quite interesting, if not insightful.
From Coroflot
Observe users on jobsites to develop understanding of customer requirements and gain inspiration for new product opportunities.
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This makes sense. Observe and talk to end users to learn more about their needs and product frustrations.
Drive concept generation through brainstorms, competitive assessments, market opportunities and unmet user needs.
I wonder is what the idea-to-product ratio is. That is, how many ideas don’t get fully developed into products, and why?
Develop ideas through rapid 2D sketching, study models and 3D CAD while considering manufacturing and cost parameters.
A staple of every Milwaukee Tool headquarters tour is seeing a couple of industrial designers actively sketching or illustrating Milwaukee cordless power tools on their Wacom Cintiq tablets.
Communicate the design intent through visual storytelling to gain acceptance by project stakeholders.
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What good is a novel design if you can’t sell it to the decision makers?
Thrive in a fast-pace design environment, with the agility to work between several projects concurrently.
I have no doubt that Milwaukee Tool is a busy place to work, especially with the pace they have been developing new power tools, hand tools, accessories, and storage products.
Apply fundamental ergonomics relative to the project. Evaluate concepts for comfort and usability through study models and mock-ups.
Good point. No matter how great a new tool is, no one will use it if it hurts or is overly fatiguing.
Produce documentation necessary to communicate the design intent to global engineering and marketing teams.
Another great point. There are some brands whose representatives simply don’t understand their own products. That doesn’t go well towards making a good impression for anyone.
Create comprehensive presentations which outline concepts to multidisciplinary teams.
Communication is key.
Follow project through all stages leading to production to ensure detailing and design intent is intact.
This is an important one, I think, for ensuring that a product is as good as possible.
From Milwaukee Tool
Coroflot is aimed towards designers. Here is the description of a Staff Industrial Designer posting from the same date, on the Milwaukee Tool job board.
Industrial design at Milwaukee Tool is chartered to create compelling solutions focused on solving critical user needs.
That sounds true to the results.
The primary duties of a Staff Industrial Designer center around the development of new products. Every project entails empathetical understanding of users, the inventive exploration of form and function with consideration for the interactions between the user and the product or system.
“Empathetical understanding of users.” In other words, understanding users’ needs, wants, and existing frustrations or hindrances.
Conceptual exploration is accomplished through competitive assessments, field visits to identify unmet user needs, design trend awareness and purposive ideation. The design intent is communicated through visual storytelling and study models to gain acceptance by the project team.
“Competitive assessments, field visits to identify unmet user needs, design trend awareness and purposive ideation.” That’s a very comprehensive list, insightful too.
Development of the conceptual direction is carried out through 2D sketching, technical illustrations, renderings, 3D CAD and appearance models. Design proposals are reviewed in a phase-gate process to obtain cross-functional consensus.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, that an industrial designer should be adept at different digital modeling techniques.
The designer will follow the solution through all pre-production stages, creating specifications for CFM requirements, product graphics and UI. Maintaining close engagement with process partners to consider cost / schedule / performance trade-offs relating to construction, assembly and manufacturing.
(CMF in product design usually refers to color/materials/finish, and so I assume CFM is the same.)
Collaboration with cross-functional product management and engineering teams is critical to delivering exceptional designs based on uncovered objectives and design criteria. Designers are expected to participate in project meetings, teleconferences as well as leading design reviews with process partners and design peers.
I’d love to see how this works.
So, there you have it, these are the duties and responsibilities of a Staff Industrial Designer at Milwaukee Tool, articulated in two ways.
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PHILIP JOHN
All the while we keep cutting the cord to bigger stronger and faster tools.
Eric
Isn’t corporate talk wonderful. Based on that I have no idea what Milwaukee is or does.
Stuart
Industrial designers are responsible for the process tools go through, from ideas to manufactured products.
Charles
As a fairly senior mechanical engineer, the following:
Collaboration with cross-functional product management and engineering teams is critical to delivering exceptional designs based on uncovered objectives and design criteria.
Basically means that your just going to be an entry level CAD monkey, pushing some drawings. I’d expect you to come up with some initial thoughts and design ideas, that’ll then be revised and updated based on inputs from a whole team of other people (that you have no supervisory role over them).
Stuart
I wouldn’t be too surprised; a newcomer isn’t going to be the lead on the next flagship product.
I thought the overall details of what a job like this entails would be interesting.
Charles
Never the less, as I follow tools and owner of multiple Milwaukee tools, this job opening tickles my interest a bit 🙂 (if only they have a senior position that’s also telecommute friendly, then I’d likely apply)
Gabriel
We need someone from Milwaukee to make a trim router. All their competitors have them. I’m trying to avoid buying from the competition so I don’t have to buy different batteries.
Mike Boney
I totally agree!!! I’m holding out in hopes that they will make one so I don’t have to buy batteries for a new platform. You would think that this would be a top priority for Milwaukee’s design team. I can’t believe they don’t offer a cordless router version. I use there big 3.5 how router at work and it’s great, better than Bosch imho. I hope it’s in the works and they are just taking there time on it to get it right. Fingers crossed.
hangovna
Patience.
Chris
I’ll stick to my day job of being a mindless, useless corporate cubicle monkey. Would be cool to have actual skills though.
John jr. Nowak
I’ve used many different tools. I’ve been building schools, hospitals, homes, tool company’s ect… i’ve used what we had but i’ve all ways liked milwaukee tools nice. Haven’t used the m18 yet I went craftmens 20v max bolt-on for easy haul.
rmkilc
Hire someone who would quit putting labels over the seems!
James Blattner
Lmbo!
JoeM
“Welcomed Traits include: A Deep Love of the colour Red, Long Walks on the beach at Sunset, Ballet, Craft Beer, And the Competitive Appetite of a Mother Grizzly Bear in Spring Time.”
I’m sorry, I just have a sick mind. All that corporate talk sounded like a dating profile, so I kinda riffed off that. I’d rather the joke than get into yet-another Red/Yellow, USA#1, “When We Gonna Get (Insert Feature Here)” argument like so many other articles posted these days.
Aaron
I really like the emphasis on a human-centered design. It can’t just look good it has to work. Industrial Design is about matching form and function to solve people’s problems.
As a Mech Eng. I’ve worked with a lot of designers during my career and the best ones understood the whole process and not just focus on aesthetics and would push and challenge our team for better designs.
I’m wondering where their Global Engineering team is located..
fred
As someone who ran companies that often had to fabricate. build and/or install the designs (engineering or architectural plans) done by others – I vote that all designers need some years of hands-on experience. I recall one example of being asked to install what was to be a hand-operated valve on a 12 inch line that was something like 16 feet above the nearest elevation. We queried about how it was to be operated – and were told that a ladder would be used. We just laughed. The design might have looked OK on paper – but not in practice. At least with tools – the designers may use focus groups to help.
MichaelHammer
That was a fun read. Thank you for posting that. I particularly liked “purposive ideation.” I think they over complicate job descriptions with the purposive ideation of separating the wheat from the chaff. The job is to simply observe, create, while being mindful of user and manufacturing capabilities, and sell your ideas to the corporate team. So you get to talk tools with the end user, which I could do all day, I could talk about nails I’m such a tool nerd, and you get to play with the competition’s tools. Oh yeah, you get to doodle on tablets too. Then you get to convince people to make the cool tool you invented. I don’t have to pay them to let me do this?
PHILIP JOHN
How about info on what’s next for High output tools. Let’s ask what we want and need and how practical will it be. The pros and cons.
Let’s start with a 26 Inch snow blower. Let’s make it 4 high output bats with the 15 amph bats that are coming out this year.
Let’s make it 18 x 4 at 36 v with 30 amph for Milwaukee …
And 60 x 4 at 120v with 30 amph of bats for dewalt. This set up would be the same as the power station that’s at 1800 w with 3600 peak.
Joe framer
Interesting read. The problem with designers is they don’t actually use the tools they design. Or for that matter any tools but a laptop.
… Same for architects, engineers, etc.They have never built a house or commercial building, so they have no clue what it really takes.
… It should be mandatory for all tool designers or architects, engineers to actually work in the field for a number of hours. Like a journey man plumber or apprentice electrician. To understand that something on paper is not the real world.
… It stems from college grads with a master’s degrees especially from ivy league institutions, believing somehow they know more then the plumber or framer or anyone that’s been doing their trade for decades.
… Hire a tradesman that’s been working decades in a field to work with the designers to develop tools. That would produce a better tool from conception.
… Sometimes a new tool just needs a tweek or two to make it a perfect tool and not one that trades people won’t buy.
Aaron
I agree some experience will help but isn’t the key. More important, is being able to observe a lot of tradesman and see what they do and don’t do through observation and discussion. I’d rather a designer spend time in the field than hiring one and base all on his experience. Designing is fun and great design requires collaboration.
Stuart
Tools don’t go from design to factory to stores in one go. They are often iterated upon, with pro user field testers giving feedback that can influence the direction of a new tool’s final design. Milwaukee has an advanced rapid prototyping and maching center where they can create many different prototype versions of a tool.
fred
@Joe Framer
That was my point (above too). It’s not all engineers (I was educated as one – and have a PE license ) that have no street smarts or building savvy but it sure helps to get your hands calloused a bit to understand the practical side. Same thing with business – not all folks with MBA’s (I’m one) know how to run a business. Education is like so many other tools – they both can help you do your job – but they need the practice of doing that job to achieve good results. I also like to think that we learn by our mistakes – with the hope that those mistakes did not result in anything too dire.
JoeM
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… We’re not all like that. I’m a DIY/Inventor type… I like to solve problems. Although I prefer to do it myself, from start to finish, sometimes I need the design and engineering laid out so I don’t scare people.
Not all Engineers are stuck behind the computer. The vast majority are on the other side of the design, working as real estate developers, contractors, and all sorts of advisors. Engineers may be needed to design a thing, but it’s handy to have an experienced technical advisor on-site wherever Engineers have handed plans over. Then there’s someone on site who actually understands the lingo in those plans, and still speaks Builder first. Practical Engineers are not to blame for company owners, foremen, and managers, not understanding what is going on. It’s company owners, foremen, and managers who are to blame for not having a highly educated builder on the other end of the line to take the guess work out of it.
I may have a genetic defect that prevents my hands from forming calluses, but it doesn’t mean squat about my technical ability. I’m equally comfortable in the dirt, and the muck, and working with real tools, as I am with the design software used to design the project. What YOU have, Framer, is a Blue Collar Education Bias on your hands. I’m not saying you’re not qualified, I’m just pointing it out so you can adapt as needed. The world is increasingly going in the direction of the high-tech. Greener engineering is on its way, and far from challenging your place in the world, like myself, you’re going to have to know another side of the process in order to qualify for more jobs coming. Today you’re framing houses, and laying down homes with modern layouts. In a few years, you may need to know how to use specialized nano-polymers that don’t cause so many health or safety problems down the line. Perhaps you’ll actually need to install machines that involve Carbon Nano-Tube filament, or Graphine Sheets, and in order to make sure your crews are installing them right, YOU might need a course in Engineering to understand how these things are SUPPOSED to work, just in case something goes wrong.
Just don’t paint designers and engineers with hate-paint with such ease. Your future depends on them, and your perception that their work is shoddy will hurt you in the long run. Simply because YOU may have to be the one with the Engineering and Design knowledge required to get the contracts that pay your bills.
MichaelHammer
We’re carpenters, we do all that. We adapt faster than engineers and architects. They implement new product without understanding the product fully. You know what we call drawings in the field? Funnies, like the funny papers. Good architects and engineers listen to us builders and adapt their plans accordingly. Some, apparently ego driven ones, don’t and things take a wrong turn. There are thousands of stories in the trades about the foibles of the white collar. Further more you’d be quite surprised how many of us take furthering education and training courses on an annual bases. Guess what? I’m college educated and many of my compatriots have higher education as well. We can read and fully understand a set of prints. Good thing too, because we usually have to fix them.
Robert J Fakelmann
Can you send me a Milwaukee catalog.
[address redacted]
Stuart
I’m sorry, but I cannot. There doesn’t seem to be a PDF I can direct you to either.
fred
Maybe this link for M12 and M18 cordless tools:
https://www.milwaukeetool.com/-/media/PDFs/Catalogs-and-Sell-Sheets/Fall-2018-Cordless-Catalog_HR.ashx
Skye A Cohen
Thanks for posting. This is the type of thing I come here for.
I definitely appreciate some of the innovation that milwaukee has been doing for the past few years. Some of their more unique trade focused tools have definitely had impacts on their respective industries I’m thinking of the pex expanders and crimp tools for example. Kind of fun to see a glance inside the door
carboncanyon
Just like there are good carpenters and bad ones, it’s important to understand that there is a wide variety of skill and experience in Industrial design.
Also, consider that a product is the result of many forces: design, engineering, accounting, user feedback, VP’s, etc. Just because you see something you don’t like don’t assume it was the designer who had the final say.
Josh Sanchez
Hey there Stuart I have an idea I drew up for the cordless impact m18 and it also can be used on virtually any kind of cordless Milwaukee drill . Is there a contact that i can get so that I can hopefully share the design with someone from Milwaukee? The drill designs are all great and I love them but this is just an add that will give them a longer life in general .
Stuart
Some tool brands have an “inventions submission” form, but I can’t find any from Milwaukee. You could try their contact form and see what happens. https://www.milwaukeetool.com/Contact
Josh sanchez
Awesome thanks for the help I will try that!