The period known as the Industrial Revolution spanned the 18th and 19th centuries and introduced mass manufacturing on scales never experienced before. Manufacturing was governed by a strict division of labor and a top-down hierarchy of social status and influence over how products and services are created. In comparison, out times, the information age, are marked by a trend toward an elimination of division of labor and hierarchies. What seems like a revolutionary change, however was an evolutionary process.

In the traditional manufacturing industries, the business and production sections of a company were associated each with a distinct and often disconnected cluster within the organization. This split is rooted in early manufacturing practices, and as we will see, it has been preserved in modern companies in the hi-tech and service sectors to this day. In many cases, the separation between the business and production sections was not only functional but also physical. It has been common to find offices of a company located in different building, cities and sometimes countries and continents from the production. This reasons for this physical separation were initially practical--factories had to be close to ports, railroads, and main transportation routes, whereas business people had to be close to banks, lawyers, and other business people who tended to concentrate in larger urban centers. Emerging zoning and environmental regulations further distanced the business-end from the production-end of a company.

The nature of production work itself further added to the split. The work environment, skills, and tools needed for running the business differed greatly from those used in factory work. These differences, captured by the white, ironed shirts of office workers, and the oiled-smudged blue overalls of the factory workers, became commonly used terms in which white collar and blue collar distinctions signify not only distinct job descriptions but also a clear socioeconomic division. When Steve Jobs and other highly influential executives began wearing jeans, t-shirts, or turtle necks to work and important company events, they signaled a symbolic shift away from the deeply rooted traditions of the industrial world and toward a flattening of hierarchies based on divisions of labor.

Mass production created a design paradox. On the one hand, mass production required a lot of design thinking. Raw materials had to be formed and tooled into parts that fit together with precision and withstand significant stresses. Just think about the design challenges posed by the immense steam locomotives, ocean liners, or today's heavy trucks. On the other hand, the design flexibility and focus on aesthetics that characterized hand-crafted products in previous centuries were severely restricted by the heavy use of industrial machinery, which dictated a cookie-cutter approach and had fewer design options.

Design tasks became highly dependent on a deep knowledge in material science, physics, and applied mathematics. The people who had education, training, and experience in these domains were not designers but engineers. Filling the need, engineers became responsible for the appearance and aesthetics of the final product, as well as the user experience it delivered.

Despite the common stereotype that presents engineers as lacking an appreciation for design, we are surrounded by fine examples of great designs created by engineers who did not have what today would be considered a formal design training. This makes sense because design, like engineering, is essentially an advanced form of problem solving, and many design problems require engineering solutions. How to keep production costs low and sticker prices competitive? How to fit a more powerful engine into the narrow space that was contained for the previous engine? How to land people on the moon and return them to earth safely in the smallest vehicle possible?

Yet, design and engineering were often in conflict because engineers and designers were considered to have very distinct objectives:

• The engineer is trained to focus on finding the best solutions for how something works—how to get the product to function as planned or better, within relevant business and technical constraints.
• The designer is trained to focus on the best solutions for how something looks and feels—how to get the user to satisfactorily gain the most out of the product's functionality, within relevant business and technical constraints.

The trend today is to narrow the gap between the fields. In the earlier history of product development, and especially when there were a lot more engineers influencing the design of products than there were designers, the usability needs of people took a secondary place to the product.

The shift in development focus toward the experiential needs of end users began with the emergence of modern advertising in the 1950s, but hugely successful, productive and efficient products were in existence long before.

Consider the consumer washing machine, another home appliance that shaped modern life. Prior to the invention of the washing machine in the late 1700s, the manual task of laundry mostly fell on women. It took about two more centuries before washing machines became an affordable household feature. Early models were perhaps simple, but they helped usher a shift toward new gender roles. 

Household chores are hard and time-consuming. The washing machine, vacuum cleaner, and other appliances changed the lives of many women, whose time and energy were no longer consumed by hours of daily manual housekeeping labor. Social change is slow, and women continue to carry most domestic responsibilities in many families. Nonetheless, common household appliances have contributed to profound changes in the social norms regarding the roles of women in and outside the home.

As home appliance became more affordable and common household items, their novelty wore off. Competition among manufacturers has turned to a race over features—more cycle options, more timing options, more temperature option, and so on. As we saw, however, more features resulted in more complexity and more frustrated customers. Even everyday products that could be found in most households presented usability obstacles. Mastering the full operational scope of your washing machine, cooking range and dishwasher took effort and then, the knowledge did not transfer easily to operating the same type of appliance made by a different manufacturer. This was a poor state of usability and eventually, it led to a shift toward greater involvement of designers in the product development process.