About IDSA

The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) is the world's oldest, largest, member-driven society for product design, industrial design, interaction design, human factors, ergonomics, design research, design management, universal design and related design fields. IDSA organizes the renowned International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) competition annually; hosts the International Design Conference and five regional conferences each year; and publishes Innovation, a quarterly on design, and designBytes, a weekly e-newsletter highlighting the latest headlines in the design world. IDSA's charitable arm, the Design Foundation, supports the dissemination of undergraduate scholarships annually to further industrial design education.

The Society has an international presence with local chapters in 27 different locations, all providing opportunities to meet other designers, learn and get inspired. There are 16 special interest groups or IDSA Sections representing diverse topics from Design for the Majority to Materials and Processes, Ecodesign to Young Professionals. IDSA has roots that reach all the way back to 1938, before the age of plastics and at least 30 years before the age of electronics and at least 50 years before the age of CAD in any form! Product design or industrial design as we call it was certainly a different profession back then.

IDSA has a small national staff based in the Washington, D.C. area which supports the member-driven activities of the Society.

Professionals can get two distinct benefits from IDSA, firstly, they can network, create awareness of themselves, their firms and their work through IDSA, attend conferences and participate in the IDEA Awards and secondly they can give back to the profession that they love through voluteer work, donations, contributing as a speaker or writing articles or setting up special projects or collaborating with others on content creation for the website.

For more information on becoming an IDSA member whether you are just starting out as a student, a young professional, professional, educator or retired from active design work or perhaps you are not a designer but associated with the profession, IDSA has benefits for you. The more you get involved, the more you will get out of your membership as IDSA is a member driven association that relies on the participation of its members to generate those activities that will be valuable to them.