Our Design 1st Development Process

The answer depends on the nature of the work you hire us to do. The work may be support-related where we contribute design or engineering services to your product development team and process. The time required varies from a few weeks to much longer depending on the activities you require from us. If our team takes your product concept from the idea stage all the way to a working product, it may take from 3 to 12+ months to complete the 4-stage design-engineering-prototyping and transfer to manufacturing process. It depends on the complexity of the product being designed.

Once the design concept is captured, engineering decisions are finalized and the product is 3D prototyped and documented, making it possible for manufacturers to bid on making the product in volume. Your design is carefully created and focused on product cost that meets quality and business needs.

The Product File documentation is well-defined, and release control managed, with manufacturers that want to produce it.

Our manufacturing setup experts will help you identify and secure trusted part suppliers and a contract manufacturer (CM) onshore, or offshore, depending on your product and business objectives.

We facilitate the prototyping and product builds, from helping coordinate the CM and parts supplier relationships, to overseeing product batch builds.

When asked we also do injection tooling approvals, release controlled documentation, regulatory testing, Bill of Materials (BOM) updates, in-process test jig creation, qualifying custom parts, MOQ ordering and supply coordination.

Designing a new hardware product starts with defining one or two possible Concept Designs (CD), based on requirements and business targets. Our technical sales team create the first CD budget with the major activities. When the work starts, we capture key product requirements, research opportunities, and unknowns, then together with you, we determine the best solution to develop. 

Our experienced development team will then facilitate and help you define the many product requirements, carry out the creative design and engineering process, examine manufacturing feasibility, and provide an ongoing estimate of the direct product cost as details are filled in and decisions on features, functions, parts, and quality are made. For a new product concept of moderate complexity, the CD design exploration and architecture definition stage takes 200+ hours. This timeline depends on many factors, including uncertainty about first users and buyers, the uniqueness of the design relative to products in the market, the number of custom components required for design and manufacturing, product safety requirements, manufacturing setup, and the amount of documentation required.​

Professional, experienced Product Design and Engineering teams in North America charge $125 to $400 USD per hour. Our rates are competitive at the lower end of this scale. After a phone discussion on your needs, we will provide a detailed design budget for review and signature.​

Call us: 1.877.235.1004 x229 or click here to schedule a meeting with Ian Kayser, our VP of Sales, who will help answer questions.

Physical Product Development is 9 to 12+ months of effort. Projects often start with loose targets and a concept solution.

One of the first steps is drafting a more specific product development plan as more detail is uncovered, so a monthly cash flow forecast can be made to get to first product build requirements and the market launch, and beyond. We recommend that you have funding for the first few months to get to specific product details so the plan can be realistic. Design 1st is a work-for-hire organization, and new projects require a small deposit to start the work, intended to cover the first month’s activities on your project. We work from a budget document with activities that you approve and bill monthly for our time.

We are an excellent fit for business teams new to hardware product development who want an expert team to plug in and move their concept design to volume production. We are experts at network products, wireless apps, and cloud integrations. Our diverse team of planners, designers, engineers, electronics, software and supply strategy experts makes the transition from product concept to manufacturing a much more predictable process.

NDA’s ensure confidentiality for both parties during conversations. We provide a mutual NDA where the terms apply to both parties. Your organization may already have a mutual NDA that requires our signature. Instead, we handle signatures via email, online, or as circumstances require.

Yes, working with you, we can navigate, negotiate, document, and fine-tune product quality during the initial production batch builds and continuous serial production.

Our process ensures we deliver value throughout development, and we transition the production management role as your operations team assumes control of manufacturing. However, if your business objectives require a more virtual, low-overhead operation, we facilitate batch production builds, supplier coordination, and product logistics oversight, working closely with you and your operations manager.