Glossary
Industrial Designer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential industrial designer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key industrial designer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in industrial designer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- CAD
- Computer-aided design.
- CMF
- Color, material and finish.
- Concept sketch
- An early design drawing.
- Design brief
- Project goals.
- Design for manufacturing (DFM)
- Designing for efficient production.
- Draft angle
- A taper that lets molded parts release.
- Ergonomics
- Designing for human comfort and use.
- Form factor
- A product’s size and shape.
- Injection molding
- A common plastic manufacturing method.
- Iteration
- Repeated design improvement.
- Prototype
- An early model of a product.
- Rendering
- A realistic image of a product.
- Tolerance
- Allowed variation in dimensions.
- Usability testing
- Watching people use designs.
- User research
- Studying how people use products.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Industrial Designer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Industrial Designer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.