This paper presents a review of different authors’ approaches about a framework to guide design education and practice. Such framework was named as “factors”, “points”, “conditions”, “requirements”, words that have been used as a significant part of the discourse of modern design thinkers and educators. Basically those factors are identified with the notions of form, function, and information, man, utility, economy, aesthetic, ergonomics, industry, and others. Our particular approach to that issue is that clear design factors are important to the definition of industrial design disciplines. However, although the design factors have been listed and explained in many occasions, imprecision and overlapping of concepts led to misinterpretation in situations where design foundations were not strong enough, or not sufficiently developed.

Different interpretations can be inferred by the study of the denotation of each term used by the authors in their countries and period of time in their Design definitions. The main contribution of this paper to the field of design education is a review of concepts and a proposal of nine design factors that have been helpful in guiding industrial design teaching practice and design education. Some teaching techniques for product development in Industrial Design courses are presented. One can consider the need to constant improvement of concepts in order to support the disciplines of industrial design programs due to global social and cultural changes provoked by the industrial societies over the past five decades.