Product Design can be defined as the idea generation, concept development, testing and manufacturing or implementation of a physical object or service. It covers more than the discipline name - Industrial Design. Product Designers conceptualize and evaluate ideas, making them tangible through products in a more systematic approach. The role of a product designer encompasses many characteristics of the marketing manager, Product management, industrial designer and design engineer.

The title name of Industrial designer has in many cases fallen into the category of an art. The role of product designer combines art, science and commerce for tangible non-perishable items. This evolving role has been facilitated by digital tools that allow designers to communicate, visualize and analyze ideas in a way that would have taken greater manpower in the past.

As with most of the design fields the idea for the design of a product arises from a need and has a use. It follows certain method and can sometimes be attributed to more complex factors such as association and telesis.

Aesthetics is considered important in Product Design but designers also deal with important aspects including technology, ergonomics, usability, human factors and material technology. The values and its accompanying aspects which product design is based on vary, both between different schools of thought and among practicing designers.

Product designers are equipped with the skills needed to bring products from conception to market. They should also have the ability to manage design projects, and subcontract areas to other sectors of the design industry.

Also used to describe a technically competent product designer or industrial designer is the term Industrial Design Engineer. The Cyclone vacuum cleaner inventor James Dyson for example could be considered to be in this category (see his autobiography Against The Odds, Pub Thomson 2002).

Many colleges such as Central Saint Martins in London have upgraded the name of their degree studies from Industrial Design to Product Design in recent decades.