Product Appearance Design

What it solves

Product appearance design often stops at a few attractive renders, without connecting requirements, market research, form, CMF, and structural truth. This skill turns exterior design into an engineering workflow: collect product category, users, scenarios, brand tone, functions, and constraints, then run trend and competitor analysis, generate comparable concepts, and gate rendering behind review. It prioritizes structural accuracy: panel thickness, button layering, seams, and mounting details must not be sacrificed for visual polish.

How it works

• Fast mode / full mode: default fast mode delivers concept notes, wireframes, and a CMF summary; requests for a “complete” or “production-ready” design run all phases.
• Five form dimensions: works across contour, proportion, shape, color, and material, using the MAYA principle, the Osborn checklist, GB/T ergonomics, and the 60-30-10 color rule.
• Design review: Phase 2.5 checks intent alignment, trend fit, competitor differentiation, iF criteria, CMF feasibility, and emotional tone before rendering.
• Prompting: uses a structure-first three-part prompt, generates overview and macro detail views, then checks the result against references/structural_accuracy.md.
• Outputs: consolidated report, standalone concept MD files, Pantone/RGB/CMYK/RAL color specs, material grades, surface treatment, ergonomic parameters, and positive/negative prompts.

Boundaries

Best for consumer electronics, appliances, tools, medical devices, or office hardware where appearance must interact with manufacturing. It is not just visual poster generation; if real structural drawings or engineering data are missing, CMF and production claims stay conceptual. Feedback should route back to Phase 1 through Phase 4 instead of rewriting all dimensions at once, which can create conflicts.