One huge secret tip for the design & development of a successful consumer product invention idea
If you‘re wanting success as a startup, inventor, or small product businesses, this is the most important yet unconventional tip you need.
I learned the hard way in my early days, but you don’t need to.
Now, every day I advise product ideators on taking a product from idea to store shelves. Here is the most important design tip that has become clear after working with 1,000 product startups over 20 years at Mako Design + Invent, a firm the exclusively does product development for startups and small businesses.
Design the product to be as simple as possible.
This is arguably the most important but also the most difficult thing to achieve when in the process of developing your invention.
The vast majority of clients that come to us start with the idea of putting every feature they can think of into their first product. They want to create a huge splash and ensure that they can hit every possible type of user, solve every potential pain point, and be able to riddle off a long list of product wins in their advertising.
In 2020, it is unlikely that your first product sales will be from an informercial, so don’t design a product that sounds like an infomercial.
Simply put, design a product with your core feature, and only your core feature. There are many benefits to this method of industrial design:
- By focusing on your golden idea exclusively, that naturally puts you and your design team’s focus on ensuring that feature is designed and engineered right.
- The simpler the product, the exponentially less expensive it is to design, engineer, prototype, and manufacture. Can’t complain against saving money, right?
- A well thought out and professionally designed product, that also is relatively simple, is going to be far more reliable. The fewer defects the happier your customers and the better the reviews. You will suffer far more damage having a complicated product that is sure to have some little part break, as opposed to having a simple product that rarely breaks.
Reliability over Features
- A simple product is far easier and less expensive to sell. The quicker a customer can understand the one key pain point you are solving, the quicker they whip out the credit card.
- Finally, you can always reinvest actual profits from your simple version to make your Version 2.0 / Premium Edition / Pro Version down the road.
Think about it, as the owner of a product design firm, the more complicated a product is, the more money we make — Yet I’m still here preaching to keep the product simple. This is because I have seen countless times over and over that keeping a new product simple has an exponentially higher probability of business success surrounding that product, and we want to design winners.
Even if you don’t want to create a business around your product, this method is still ideal for product licensing, raising financing to get through development, or selling the product design outright.
Whether working with a design firm or developing the product yourself, keep to this motto of design simplicity and you’ll be on the road to making your invention idea the next hit product.
