One reason its getting harder to find a product design position

We product designers (even though it's not what I do to earn my crust, I still have a product designers heart) are a relatively rare bunch, that is to say that compared to graphic designers etc we are in the minority, but we are still here.  So when searching for jobs, how irksome it is to look at lots of job listings that say 'designer wanted' to then visit the description to find the company want a graphic designer or a costume designer or any other designer other than a product designer.   The latest is jobs advertised for NPD. Not so long ago, NPD (New Product Development) seemed to be mainly focused on product design. Now NPD seems totally related to designing and working within the foods industry, creating the latest ready meal.  Since when did the food industry bag it and why can they not call it something like NPDF.  There are so many disciplines that have designer as their following word, costume, set, graphic, car, lighting, to name but a few.  Why can’t the people writing the job descriptions not be more specific.  Surely this would achieve a better hit rate in terms of applicants as people scanning the job listings would know exactly what the job advertised was for?  Ok rant over.

old skool Design ideas - lamp

When I was in University, during a very short project I designed and made a prototype for a fold up table top lamp body that gripped a bulb and socket.  The design was one piece, made from polypropylene and whilst it looked (in my opinion) quite cool, it was actually fairly unstable and due to the materials and shape, too light weight to be safe.  The reason for posting it here is because it's been sat in a cupboard for about 15 years, but now I need to recycle the materials for another design project I'm currently working on, a series of watches, so just before it is gone forever, sacrificed for the greater model making good, I decided to record it for posterity.

design ideas - Coffee plunger

I have friends who can't seem to plunge coffee without jetting it all over the table.  They get too impatient and push down too hard - ahem.  Whilst this may be a comment on a society that is in too much of a rush to even wait for good home made coffee. It got me thinking about improvements (probably gimmicks) that manufacturers could make to their designs, to offer a USP.  There are many ways to slowly depress the plunger, including motors and wind up mechanisms, but in the end I settled for a weight that could be placed on top of the plunger once the coffee had brewed for the required amount of time, so that our friend gravity could be left to do the job.  The coffee will no longer jet, but in regards to the manufacturers, it probably won't fly either.