Following graduation, it can take a considerable period of time for a designer to develop confidence and professional competence in industrial design. Many professionals would agree that it can take at least 10 years. This length of time is needed for the designer to build a database of experience and it is this experience that the designer accesses during the process of designing. This is the way it has been, because the process of design has not basically changed over the years, and it has come to be accepted that a long period of apprenticeship to the design profession is essential after graduation. However, this suggests that the decision-making process of design is based upon experience and intuition.

For many years, designers involved in research sought to place the design process on a more systematic and rigorous foundation. However, this proved to be problematic and a large percentage of the effort in developing methodological techniques was unsuccessful. Designers generally repudiated methodological