That knowledge plays a meaningful role in product development is largely undisputed. There is, however, no agreement about which kinds of knowledge are relevant for the disciplines involved. Obviously, there are differences between the knowledge required by industrial designers and by engineering designers. This paper aims to describe knowledge which is needed in the early stages of design processes. Driven by an educational problem referred to in the paper, several aspects of design knowledge are discussed in contrast to engineering design knowledge. This paper does not develop a cohesive model of design knowledge. But the aspects help developing a method for easier knowledge evaluation in early stages of the industrial design process.