First impressions count: the importance of high-quality visuals in the Product Design Engineering discipline

Product Design Engineering (PDE) combines industrial design (ID) and mechanical engineering disciplines. Traditionally engineering disciplines focus more on the technical and less on the creative, however PDE is a unique combination of technical mechanical engineering and the creative industrial design disciplines. Powerful product renderings help promote and excite the viewing audience and it is important to maximise the potential of each student project. These powerful visuals are standard practice in the 3D design industry, which underpins the importance for this standard to be followed through to the student cohort to make each student industry ready. When promoting student work in publications and at exhibitions it is the visuals that draw the viewer to the project. First impressions of a product are decided instantly and this will make or break the willingness for the viewer to delve deeper into the project or to simply move onto the next one. Over the past five years of teaching into this discipline the importance of quality visuals to help communicate final project outcomes has become more apparent. Too often we have seen quality projects backed up with significant engineering detail let down by poor-quality visual outcomes. This paper highlights the importance of high-quality visuals in the PDE discipline as well as show comparison studies of high-quality and lowquality product visuals of the same project to help the audience understand the importance and power first impressions make to this industry.