Product Strategy Expertise
Physical device development starts with exploring new opportunities, yet every new opportunity carries part selection, manufacturing quality and supply chain risks that can kill the product success. Our experienced design and engineering team helps you find innovative solutions and evaluate these critical risks early.
Trusted to develop manufacture-ready connected products for Enterprises, Start-Ups, and Entrepreneurs
Smart Product Strategy De-Risks Your Development Investment
Many innovation teams dive into design and engineering without qualifying their success metrics and core assumptions first. Without upfront qualification of the riskiest elements of a new idea, teams face expensive pivots, failed launches, and wasted investment when risks surface late.
Our strategic product planning methodology starts at the early-stage design thinking.
Case Study: How one entrepreneur navigated the unknowns in product design
Most development teams execute well—but few invest in the upfront analysis of the critical success factors. Our product strategists, designers, and engineers bring decades of experience identifying, researching and testing make-or-break assumptions that determine product viability. We help you qualify user needs, assess technical feasibility, and expose business model and market value risks before the major development investment.
- We Explore Opportunities – feasible/doable, key risks
- We build and test new features with target users – use value
- We identify critical parts – supply, manufacture and cost
- We assess technical requirements – feasible/constraints
- We plan out supply strategy – cost/sourcing issues
- We provide data – for go/no-go decisions
Product Strategy Planning Capabilities
We help validate physical product opportunities early—solving manufacturing feasibility before major investment.
Configuring Feasible Concept Options
Create one or more high level product options to weigh innovation and manufacture reality:
- Architect each concept – user interface, mechanical, electronics, software
- Assess the concepts – manufacture complexity, part-product cost, tooling
- Feature trade-off analysis – weigh each user value against new frontier risk
- Risk versus opportunity maps – to help integrate concept ideas into one
- Requirements and Targets – capture initial list, update as design develops
Exploration Research
For critical high-risk elements of a new product idea, we research available data and talk with users and experts to guide us on how to quantify and qualify these risks. Business, Market, User and Product risks are considered.
- Technical feasibility – find feasible solutions, assess new functions/parts
- Competitor products – analyze price, differentiate, competitive advantage
- IP landscape review – to identify obvious patent risks and opportunities
- Distribution channel options – analyze margins, logistics, costs, barriers
Business, User, Market Analysis
Explore target market value and product related business risks:
- Market research – surveys and interviews to understand features/value
- User needs research – surveys, user groups, talk with expert users
- Buyer research – understand purchasing decisions and influencers
- ROI modeling – R&D, costs, margins, and break-even analysis
- Supply strategy – landed costs and distribution expenses
Manufacturing Planning from the Start
We capture product requirements, track design changes to keep you in control:
- Define/document – technical specs, tolerance, performance requirements
- Compliance testing – for safety, environmental, and industry standards
- Quality and reliability – set part and product targets for part/cost selection
- User Experience – set/evaluate success targets as product idea evolves
- From strategy to solutions, we find risks, then build and test to guide us
What Clients Say About Working With Design 1st
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Richard Mineo CEO, Swabbot Solutions LLC 
Design 1st Exceeds Expectations in Responsiveness
Read Case StudyDesign 1st took our Cobot from initial concept through final product testing, handling electrical, mechanical, software, and manufacturing needs all in one team. They efficiently developed our tank access system, finalized our swabbing robot, and created a benchtop version, keeping us updated and responding quickly to every change request.
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George Tsintzouras Director of Product, Christie Digital 
Immediately understood what was needed
Read Case StudyWhen we wanted to transition our older generation projector models to a more modern look and feel, Design 1st was a valuable asset. Given the depth of their design and engineering experience, Design 1st immediately understood what was needed. They worked with our internal engineering team through the process to provide us with compatible solutions to meet our needs.
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Stephen Rayment VP Engineering, Ericsson 
Our trusted engineering partner for six years
Read Case StudyDesign 1st has been our trusted industrial design and mechanical engineering partner for over six years and they have proven themselves to be valuable, competent and committed to our success. They add value because they understand the tradeoffs between user value and cost, the need to balance both the business and product objectives, along with excellent knowledge of materials and manufacturing / tooling options.
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Mike Tettenborn VP Engineering, Caframo 
Right balance of art and engineering
Read Case StudyWe selected Design 1st because their designers and engineers demonstrated the right creativity and technical understanding. With their CAD and modelling tools they were able to address the numerous design challenges encountered with this type of product. The end result was an easy-to-install, powerful marine hatch fan – unlike any on the market.
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Kurt Francis Co-Founder, CTO, Molecule 
Deepest bench of technical talent
Read Case StudyI did a lot of due diligence on product development companies and Design 1st had the deepest bench for technical capability. They worked on such a broad range of products with successful commercialization. Design 1st’s early efforts in prototype development helped us move from a powder substrate into a commercial product for testing.
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John Lupton Director of Engineering, GeoSight 
Got up and running fast
Read Case StudyThe whole design was my idea and I had patents on them. The team’s main work was to solve the functionality issue of a piece of my design. On top of that, they helped identify one of our manufacturers.
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Didi Horn CTO, SkyX 
Exceeded Our Expectations
Read Case StudyThe Design 1st team exceeded our expectations and helped us deliver an exceptional product to the market. As a startup, we were working within a budget but expected the highest quality product. Design 1st identified the risks up front, had the vast network of partners to find the right components, and customized it to meet our unique needs.
Product Strategy Expertise That Validates Opportunities Early
From technical feasibility to component cost, supplier selection and production feasibility, early risk evaluation provides real data for informed go/no-go decisions before you invest in development, tooling and inventory for manufacturing.
Product Concept Exploration
Many teams lock into their first gut feel idea without digging deeper into the risks and exploring alternative approaches. They miss opportunities for simpler solutions, additional innovation and scalable product platform planning. Our team has deep expertise in product related business, market, user and product trade-offs. Working closely with clients, we develop multiple distinct product concepts that solve the same user problem with additional approaches. Using a structured approach, we quickly show feasible technical variants and their benefits and risks. This approach will help you compare pros and cons of each direction before committing to a single solution to develop further.
Early Risk Assessment
Hidden risks discovered mid-development destroy budgets and kill product sales. Many design teams focus on the solution first, developing exciting features tied to envisioned user benefits. They often overlook the critical technical constraints, regulatory hurdles, and cost contributors that can derail projects when this information is eventually uncovered.
With our deep experience in human factors, technical and supply expertise, we systematically identify and evaluate project-killing risks before major development cost spend begins. Our assessments and data collection helps you make informed decisions about a product configuration that balances your business and market goals with user needs and the best product configuration to develop and bring to market.
Market and User Research
Assumptions about market and demand lead to products nobody wants to buy. Most development teams rely on internal opinions and anecdotal feedback, building products based on what they think users need rather than qualifying their opinions with low-cost market research and testing.
We use structured research at several levels of data quality and cost that qualify your market size and user value early in the product development. Our systematic approach includes surveys, structured focus groups and data analysis to gauge market fit, user needs and buyer’s interest.
Go/No-Go Decision Framework
Development teams without clear decision criteria risk developing a dead-end solution. Most projects continue based on momentum and sunk costs rather than objective continuous assessments of technical feasibility, market need and business viability. We establish structured decision points with measurable criteria for clients to make project continuation or termination decisions. It is estimated that 70% of a products lifetime costs are locked in during the product concept and part selection stage. Our systematic approach defines clear checkpoints, documents success metrics and pivot strategies – ensuring our design team remains focussed on a viable product with data driven decisions, from the idea right through to product launch. We want to help clients make decisions to terminate the project early on if the opportunity success value is too low.
The Only Team You Need to Move Your Product Through Design to Production
Design 1st’s in-house team of experts works as a single unit across design, engineering, software, and manufacturing to reduce risk, streamline development, and launch your connected device faster.
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Mechanical Engineering
Find creative mechanical solutions to technical challenges.
Mechanical Design Team
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Industrial Design
Transform your product concept into a refined manufacture-ready design.
Industrial Design Team
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Electronics Engineering
Add power, secure connectivity, and interaction control to your products.
Electronic Design Team
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Portfolio of Projects
Across every industry, our team excels at developing technically complex projects.
Fully Certified and Award-Winning
Our company and staff are professional engineers with multiple industry certifications.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I Need to Sign an NDA First?
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.
How Much Will My Project Cost?
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 schedule a meeting with Ian Kayser, our VP of Sales, who will help answer questions.
Need help tackling tough technical challenges in your product development?
Design 1st integrates our knowledge and expertise with yours to bring your product idea to life.
