Take Your Product Idea From Concept To Manufacturing With This Simple Framework
Discover our approach for building prototypes using 4-week cycles that can get your product ready for manufacturing in just 6 months while saving 50% of development costs.
This is Part 2 of a 3 part series on how to build your product idea. These are the links to the other 2 parts Part 1 (Discovering a new way) and Part 3 (Starting with Product Builds).
In the first part of this article, I have introduced our approach to building your product idea which consisted of building a series of increments of your product in time-boxed cycles. Let’s describe in more detail what is that all about.
What are Product Levels?
Let’s start with the very first pillar of our approach (Product Levels). Product Levels represent the different states of evolution and maturity of your product from concept to mass production. There are 6 product levels that have specific purposes during development. There might be several iterations of each level based on the results and feedback gathered at the end of each PB.
Depending on the characteristics of your project, you might not need to go through all of these levels (although it is recommended in most cases) or some levels will have more interest than others. For example, a fashion product would likely dedicate more time and iterations to design prototypes than to functional prototypes.
As mentioned earlier the different levels show the evolution of the product and the increase in detail and features as we move from concept to mass production. However, the main characteristic of the product levels is that each one represents working or functional versions of the product that can be used for a particular purpose, as opposed to being isolated subsystems or partial products.
Proof of Concept
Main goal: Validate your Solution
The Proof of Concept (POC) is mainly used for when products introduce new innovations and technologies. As an example, a backpack product that is using a different design and materials, would not really require a proof of concept since backpacks are common and the uncertainty and risk of the concept are negligible. On the other hand, a new biometric wearable device that detects your blood cell count would definitely start with a POC to validate the technology, the user needs and to define technical requirements all of which might have high uncertainty and risk.
The main idea of building a POC is to validate in the simplest form and as fast as possible that your concept works and it’s what users need. Therefore, it is common to use ready available products that would have a similar function to that of your product idea or use development kits or as many off-the-shelf components as possible so you can get away with “quick and dirty” adaptations and you don’t have to invest too much time developing your product from scratch at this stage.
Aim for something like this,
rather than going straight to this,
Design Prototype
Main Goal: Validate Usability and Aesthetics
A Design prototype is a great way to test the proposed form factors of the product and show it to users in a dynamic way. In some cases the prototype has some basic functionality especially if it is important to evaluate user interaction, but unless it is really necessary the prototype is built without integrating any functionality of the product yet. This is the case with hardware products where the inner electronics are not integrated into this level, you can understand them as dummy products (have you ever seen those fake smartphones units in stores’ displays?).
This product level is likely the one that will see more versions of the product being fabricated either in a single PB or in different iterations. That is because it can be relatively simple and cheap to make variations of the design by using cardboard, foam or wood models, 3D printing or laser cutting methods among others. It doesn’t mean that they need to look beautiful, they just need to serve the purpose, such as checking dimensions and volumes, shape proportions, user interaction, visual identity, and material finishes if that is an essential feature.
In this level, I would also consider other alternatives that don’t really require to actually fabricate the prototype, such as concept sketching and rendering. But it is likely that you will be using a combination of digital and physical versions.
Before we continue, this is a good time to start evaluating the final packaging of your product. This is commonly left for the last minute once almost in production and it oftentimes delays the project and even forces design changes. So, it is important to start looking into the packaging at this stage to at least get an idea of what it would look like and how it will be fabricated. For some products, the packaging is almost as important as the final product so don’t underestimate this task and keep evaluating it at each product level.
Functional Prototype
Main goal: Validate Functionality
This product level might not make sense in certain products which functionality is more tied to the external design such as in traditional backpacks, sunglasses, phone cases, and many others. In those cases, the functionality would be evaluated with Design prototypes rather than Functional prototypes.
At this level, you are aiming to validate the main functionality of your product and test the prioritized features and highest risks. Unless there are really tight inter-dependencies between some of the functional components and the outer shape of the product, it is recommended that you layout the main functional components in a setup that is not constrained by the volume of the final product.
As an example, if you were building a speaker product, you might think that in order to test, let’s say, the sub-woofer quality you will need to integrate everything into the final enclosure to test sound dynamics, vibrations, noise dampening and so on. However, you could still layout all the electronics, batteries, buttons and controls, LCD display and other components separately, and only if the sound quality requires that level of precision at this stage, you would fabricate the custom enclosure chamber and integrate it with the sub-woofer as a standalone sub-assembly.
The advantages of this are:
- No limitation of space
- Facilitate the interchangeability of components.
- It allows the use of over-sized and off-the-shelf parts initially that can be progressively replaced by the final customized parts.
- Facilitates functional testing of components and subsystems in parallel prior to integration in the final product.
- Ease of visualization and monitoring of the system.
So, as you can imagine, in this level aesthetics are not a concern and it shouldn’t be. In most cases, the prototype in these PBs won’t look anything like the final product.
Engineering Prototype
Main Goal: Verify Product Feasibility
Once design and functionality have been evaluated and confirmed, it is time to combine both in a single prototype. Typically, the main challenge at this stage is to integrate all the functional components inside the proposed shape due to obvious space constraints. In order to help in this transition, it is good practice to use the previous functional prototype in parallel to test your custom components and alternatives that are candidates to fit inside the product.
The purpose then is to evaluate the technical feasibility of the complete design including enclosures and how everything is assembled together and identify any limitations. The prototype starts to look more like the final product but it might still need “help” holding parts together and get by with rough finishes. At this level, the technical design and specifications are defined in detail.
Pre-production Prototype
Main goal: Verify Product Viability
Although production methods have been considered at a high level throughout the previous PBs, at this stage manufacturing processes are detailed and confirmed to ensure the product is able to be produced.
The most important activity with this product level is to build a series of short runs for repeatability and testing purposes. This might still not fully represent the final production methods and will use more like rapid production tools to get a small scale manufacturing setup. A small scale setup will allow to postpone the high investment required in the final production tooling and equipment and still provide a series of samples with close to production like quality. Some examples of small scale manufacturing options are, 3D printed parts and 3D printed tools, Silicone or aluminum molds, semi-automated jigs and fixtures, laser cutting.
Samples from this product level would be suitable for certification purposes in many cases if your product requires such. Since the product readiness for manufacturing has been validated at this stage, this is also the right time for you to launch a crowdfunding campaign or look for funding in preparation for the high costs of production tooling plus orders of raw materials and components to start production. Even products from these short runs could potentially become your first sales at least to some specific set of customers or early fans.
Production Samples
Main goal: Validate Production
Lastly, we arrive at the final product level, in which we actually don’t use the word prototypes anymore and instead we build actual product samples. At this level, we use final production processes, tools and types of equipment to confirm the production readiness and the quality standards of the product.
Once all the production tooling and equipment has been fabricated and set up, the first parts that are manufactured and assembled together are inspected to ensure the quality of the product. The production process is validated through production runs where all operations and assembly steps are coordinated and quality controls implemented.
There is little design at this stage and more build, testing and monitoring activities. It is not rare to arrive at this stage with issues that could require minor modifications and adjustments in tooling. However, most of the common issues that traditionally take place during these stages would be avoided by having considered the product manufacturing and assembly steps in previous PBs.
How to get started?
Now that you have a clear picture of each of the product levels and which are their main goals during the development, let’s focus on the other 3 pillars of our approach and see how to put that in practice.
As mentioned before, the approach focuses on building these product levels and iterations in what we have called Product Builds (PBs). But before we can start working on a PB we need to make sure we have a well-defined solution to build and a plan to move forward. So we are going to start by defining the Idea Brief and then plan the PBs based on the solution that you want to develop.
Idea Brief
The Idea Brief is a simplified version of what a project brief would be and it’s focused on identifying a solution that solves a particular problem for the users. We have created a one-pager document that we call, Idea Brief Canvas, which helps to quickly and easily fill in and visualize the main aspects of the solution that you are trying to develop. And these are the main sections that should be defined on it:
- Problem
- User Case
- User Needs
- Solution
- Features
- Competitors
- External Factors
- Requirements
Problem and User Case. Define a problem statement that helps to identify the target user and the particular problem that prevents them from achieving their goal (desired outcome). The problem statement will come from the feedback and insights you have gathered in your own market research. A good problem statement should be specific, genuine, with a clear target user and should not include your solution or features.
As support content, there is a section called User Case in which you can write down the problem and user in context to help better understand their pains and struggles with a specific situation.
User Needs. From the problem statement, you can already identify some or all of the user needs simply by extracting and adapting the sentences from it.
For example, the problem statement for Gopro cameras was,
“Amateur sports photographers could not get close enough to the action or buy quality equipment at reasonable prices”
User need 1 — Get close to the action
User need 2 — Record sports and extreme activities
User need 3 — Capture high-quality image/video
User need 4 — Affordable cost
The User Needs can be sorted by priority based on feedback from the market research.
Solution. Define briefly what is the solution that will solve the user problem and attend his needs. Describe it in a high level, as if it was a pitch rather than a list of technical wonders.
Features. Now based on your solution and the user needs to define the list of features that your solution offers. They have to be directly linked to the user needs and thus also sorted by priority. This is one of the benefits of using the Idea Brief Canvas to link your problem and features.
Competitors. List the main competitors for your product and industry. Make sure to include both direct competitors as well as indirect competitors such as the current solutions that the target customers are using and getting by with today.
External Factors and Operations. It is helpful to also consider some important external factors that will have an effect on the development of your solution. Some examples are Intellectual property, product certifications, country, and industry standards. Also related to operations, such as your volumes forecast, which markets are you targeting, what’s your expected retail price, any key dates that have to be met. Only fill what you know at this stage.
Requirements. Lastly, based on the above features and factors, list the technical requirements for the product. This is the most technical step of all, and it should be reviewed by someone with technical knowledge. It doesn’t have to be exhaustive initially and it can be completed as you move forward, but are an important starting point for the development of the solution and setting up certain boundaries in the scope.
Here it is an example of a filled Idea Brief using Gopro sport cameras only as a reference.
Build Plan
Once you have defined your solution details in the Idea Brief, you can start to plan how you will go about building it using the PBs defined before. It is more of a lightweight plan for your development rather than an exhaustive plan of all the little activities and timelines that are usually seen in very detailed Gantt charts.
It doesn’t make sense to plan so much in advance with detailed dates and milestones when you are starting with much uncertainty at the beginning. I find much more helpful a high-level plan of the estimated PBs that are expected to take place based on the product characteristics.
These would be the main steps to create a Build Plan:
- Identify the builds and iterations. How many PBs will take place for each product level and foreseen iterations.
- Define high-level goals. Each product level has its own main goal, but here you can maybe specify based on your product context.
- Estimate time for each build. As mentioned earlier, we usually consider 4 weeks for each PB, although it will depend on your product.
- Identify the resources needed. Define which skills and professionals you would need to complete a PB. The same for other services that might be needed to build the prototypes.
- Estimate the high-level costs. These would be the costs of the prototype build and any professional services. It is not the cost of the final product. An estimation to start with will suffice.
In the last part, we will show you how to run a Product Build and share some useful resources with you.
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Go ahead to the next part to get started with the Product Builds Part 3 (Starting with Product Builds).
