Product design and development for consumer electronics

Why do you need product design and development for you company?

A lot of our customers come to us for our expertise in product design and development, oftentimes because they have been market leader in a certain area for a long period but are now witnessing a number of similar products or “me-too” products flooding the market.

In other cases,  they have had several ideas for great products, which they want to use to establish or retain their market lead. The main question always is, or should be, how much time and money do we need to invest to create a successful product? A good rule of thumb is to make sure your breakeven point is around 1/5^th of the product’s lifecycle. This depends of course a lot on the types of products you want to develop, the innovation level needed for the development, and the complexity of the product.

Innovation is about staying ahead of competitor products or services by making sure your product or service maximises customer or client satisfaction and enhances their lifestyle through provision of comfort and facilitation of tasks

So you want to develop a product, but which product first?

Knowing what hand to play is important in all businesses, after all, you can only spend your money once, right? As you now understand the importance of innovation, but which product or idea should you start with? Start with doing research on your target market, what products are they using now, which problems do the use of these products form? And what are the directions to solve these problems?

To answer these questions, a great way to start is to do research on your existing customer base, you know your market and your consumers better than anybody else. Make use of that knowledge to ensure the products you envision developing solve relatable problems for your customers.  We can help you implement the use of focus groups and user research to evaluate yours and competitor products on the market. Compare all the issues found and make sure you also take into consideration other possible solutions to the customer’s problems. (e.g. a car is the solution for a customer who wants to travel around the city, but also is a bike, and UBER solves the same problem).

Based on these findings you can create mappings to find possible innovation options. Use these to develop an innovation roadmap, stepping up the level of development with each new product. This way you create a long term and long lasting product strategy. If you need help with these subject, we offer product strategy as one of our services and can give you a free design consultation if needed.

How does our product design and development process work?

Now that you are this far into reading this page, we assume you value product innovation in the same way that we do. Now let’s talk about our product development process and how we can transform your product idea into a great product!

We’ve developed an integrated, lean, development process that allows design, mechanical and electrical engineering to be seamlessly interwoven. We always start with what we call the specification loop in which the product specifications are laid out based on product requirements, strategy, and insights. This will give you and us a detailed insight into the direction the project will take, and a project roadmap can be laid out, ensuring we get the desired results in the fastest way possible.

These insights are used to ensure the product concept can be transformed into realistic model of the product through multiple iterations of product designs. Our years of experience in design and development enable us to create designs with the manufacturing processes in mind. At the end of this stage you will have a design ready for production.

We are used to working as an external development partner for multinationals as well as assisting start-ups and scale-ups with turning their product idea into a final product. But our goal is not to just create “another” finished product, instead we aim to add value with our product designs.

Product design and development is strategic approach to innovation!

Whilst we see ourselves as more than just a product developer, product design process is always optimized for each individual project, depending on the project requirements and how we can best utilise our in-house knowledge. Our tried and tested methods of working have been recognised through numerous design awards and innovation prizes and we always make sure our resources are utilised as efficiently as possible.

We are experts in several types of products, including consumer electronics, home appliances and IoT devices, and have worked for multinationals like Philips and Samsung as well as growing start-ups like Rocean and Zepcam.

Want to know more about how we can help your project? We offer a  free design consultation, In a quick call, we will discuss your project specifics,  the possible routes you can take to get this product to market and the obstacles to avoid.