Our Design 1st Development Process
Need help going from an idea to a functioning physical product? One-off builds to serial production.
The are 3 major areas to consider when setting out to design and develop a physical device - we call the device “a product”.
Planning the Direction
The early requirements work starts with deciding on the product idea, potential users and buyers, and ends with the birth of the product concept, drafting the bones of the idea and capturing the goals, targets and requirements that will get used to engineer and evaluate the final solution.
Designing and Engineering the Solution
Finding a Company to Build and Supply Your Product to meet your Requirements
Our 4-Stage Process
Stage 1
Concept Design
Stage 2
Detailed Engineering
Stage 3
Prototype and Test
Stage 4
Transfer to Manufacturer
How Design 1st Fits Into Your Product Planning
Companies with a Development Team
Company/Startup no Development Team
Entrepreneur Inventor First Timers
Business / Supply Strategy
- IP Review
- Product Supply Strategy
- Manufacturing Coordination
- Qualify Risky Suppliers
User & Buyer Research
- User/Buyer Outreach
- Informal Testing
- Personas Creation
- Surveys, Focus Groups
Market Requirements
- Market Research & Features
- Competitive Tear Downs
- Distribution Channel Plan
- Barriers & Costs
Product Design
- Feasibility & Options
- Simulation Modelling
- Engineering & Part Selection
- Prototype & Verification
Manufacturing Setup
- Transfer to Manufacturer
- Approve Parts & Builds
- Release-Controlled Specs
- Certifications & QA
Hiring an Expert Team
Define business, market, user and product targets early on. It is estimated that 70% of a products lifetime cost are locked in, during the product concept and major parts selection stage.
Physical Products are Challenging to Develop
To get a product idea ready to sell to customers may require conceiving a whole new market opportunity or perhaps it involves replacing or improving on a current solution.
A 4-stage development process is critical for successfully developing a substantially new product idea, the outcome is far riskier than doing “incremental” product improvements which require much less planning. Generally new devices solve a problem, improve on a task, improve a process or change a workflow. Products must be designed to survive and function without failure in the environment they will be used in.
Unlike Software development, physical products have one major challenge
If one part or function fails on a customer – the product fails. This matters because with physical product you will build product in batches, so when a problem is discovered, you fix or discard many units, at high cost.
The parts selected for use in the product must meet many expectations – going from subjective aesthetics and ease of use to survival in real world shipping, user frustration, mother nature, regulatory safety and other feats of performance, reliability and endurance.
We Can Help – from one-off product designs to higher volume serial production
We are a 30-person team of physical product development specialists with cross function team members including Product Planning, User
Experience, Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Software Engineering and Supply coordination. Our experience is based on the number and diversity of the products we have developed over 30 years, in many markets (we have developed more than 1000 physical products).
We know where to start, helping define requirements, capturing fluid information, direct and guide a business team, integrate with existing
engineering teams, find reliable parts, identify and qualify risks and organize the order of activities based on these variables. We focus on
requirements and areas of high-risk first to determine options and feasibility, before getting too far into large budget spends on the solution.
Concept Stage Starts with Strategy
For physical products, it’s high value, fast, and low cost to get organized at the start. We love the proverb: “aim before you shoot.”
Many teams lock into their first gut feel idea without digging deeper into risks and alternatives.
The early requirements work starts with deciding on the product idea, potential users and buyers, and ends with the birth of the product concept, drafting the bones of the idea and capturing the goals, targets and requirements that will get used to engineer and evaluate the final solution.
We work closely with clients using a structured approach to explore and document requirements, options, benefits, and risks.
There are several documents that professional development teams create early on, to organize their product design ideas and thinking across Business, User, Market, Product and Supply dimensions. This results in a more organized development program with lower cost to develop. Having your product related targets, requirements and other critical information in an organized form helps us with design and engineering decisions and keeps us focused on the critical product details.
This information helps us design, engineer, choose key parts (balancing cost and performance), create the product and build the many documents that are the PRODUCT FILE. The design team will make many decisions and tradeoffs with you, on the path from the idea to the final solution.
We can help you with an initial draft of these Requirement Documents using our secure server tools, done quickly before the project starts, and at no cost to you. These documents are a lot of work to organize and require updates. The goal is to have the details so they can easily be referred to.
It is critical to maintain and update these Requirement Documents at end of each stage with the design team as they determine the test plans.
Frequently Asked Questions
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