Leveraging holistic design principles to improve products
Overview of Design for Excellence
For today’s post, we’re going to take a short break from thinking like a CPO (*audience cheers*), and practice thinking like an engineer (*audience groans*). Relax, it won’t be that bad, I promise. The concept that I want to discuss today, Design for Excellence, is like a puzzle in that it’s a group of complimentary pieces that together make a finished product!
Now… Design for Excellence is something I personally will come back to a lot here on the blog, as I am a believer in holistic methods leading to the best outcomes in product. If you’re unfamiliar with Design for Excellence, don’t sweat it- I’m here to spell it out for you. Let’s get into it!
Design for Excellence
One of my favorite concepts in product is “Design for Excellence” or “Design for X”. Design for X is a complex product design methodology, but it’s a major value unlock to understand even the basics as an early-stage entrepreneur.
It helps me to think about it like this:
The X in “Design for X” represents the specific parameter you are solving for in your product’s design. Examples include “design for cost”, “design for sustainability”, and “design for manufacturing”. Design for Excellence empowers product designers to analyze product design through multiple parameter-specific lenses (design guidelines) which together make a holistically great product. Let’s review a few below:
Disclaimer: the following parameters are not mutually exclusive (nor is the list completely exhaustive). Therefore, I have chosen to analyze each “in a vacuum”, so to speak.
Design for Cost
Design for Cost, in its truest sense, uses cost reduction techniques to achieve the lowest total cost of a product or service.
Considerations (not exhaustive):
- Material selection (e.g., sourcing, raw material price trends / availability, failure rate, pre- / post- processing)
- Individual component design (e.g., material volume, part density, modular compatibility, machining)
- Transport optimization (e.g., pallet compatibility, cube optimization, ships in own container)
How to find cost opportunities for a product (own or competitor):
Perform competitive product and packaging teardowns: A competitive teardown is a systematic deconstruction and comparison of your team’s product / competitor products component-by-component. Breaking products down into their building blocks allows you to recognize opportunities for cost reductions by comparing to best in class products and analyzing design decisions that may not be apparent on the product’s surface. Look for opportunities to hollow out parts, remove finishes from or change materials for internal components, consolidate pieces, etc.
Design for Quality
Design for Quality is a set of design techniques that strive to make a product reliable / durable, safe, and robust.
Considerations (not exhaustive):
- Materials selection (e.g., strength-to-weight ratio, chemical compatibility, failure rate)
- Functional integration (e.g., mating tolerance ranges, parts compatibility, data / information flows / node optimization)
- Individual component design (e.g., consolidation / fewest number of parts, simplicity of part design)
- Reliability testing / benchmarking (e.g., reliability testing against competition, number of cycles to failure)
How to find quality opportunities for a product:
Single point of failure analysis: A single point of failure is a big no-no in product design, yet it actually occurs quite often. A basic example of this is IoT products or softwares that don’t offer an “offline mode”, therefore the product is useless when not connected to the internet. In physical products, this may be a single point of hardware failure, or a design that is not easily repairable.
Tolerance assessment: A product is only as good as its weakest link, so it’s important to assess if tolerance ranges of individual components in a product are all appropriate. This should be considered across use cases (even edge cases). And should be treated as particularly critical for failure modes with serious consequences.
Specification assessment: Additionally, compare functional requirements with actual component specifications. Look both for opportunities where the product is “over-speced” and “under-speced” (inconclusive if these are real terms or simply more Sam jargon). Over-speced means that the product is using too high of a standard for the functional requirements (e.g., using medical grade materials in a non-medical setting, using a higher power motor than needed). Under-speced means the opposite. In certain categories, varying use cases may call for varying specs (different product models) — ever seen a “pro series” product?
Design for Manufacturing
Design for Manufacturing is a set of design techniques that optimize a product for cost-effective, efficient manufacturing.
Considerations (not exhaustive):
- Assembly analysis (e.g., assembly time, number of manual processes, cost per manual assembly step)
- Automation feasibility (e.g., parts count, required materials, assembly and disassembly)
- Material handling (e.g., number of parts to be moved in the factory, cost per unit of material handled)
- Volume analysis (e.g., bill of materials, suppliers, equipment)
How to find manufacturing opportunities for a product:
Customization v. standardization assessment: One of the biggest decisions in manufacturing process design is whether a product needs a high degree of customization, or if standardization makes more sense. This will also factor into make v. buy decisions. As with all product decisions, user needs should strongly influence these decisions. Plus, looking at the bill of materials, equipment requirements, volume analysis, etc. will help provide an additional lens.
You can also apply this concept to digital products. For example, if a competitor is including a video chat functionality, are they using an existing platform plug-in or did they make their own service? Standardization is obviously more limited, but also more cost efficient.
Manual-automatic axis: Another manufacturing consideration is whether a product is produced using manual processes or automated ones. Likely, but not always, this assessment mirrors the one above. If current processes are heavily manual, you may find an opportunity to introduce automation, which can improve efficiency and reduce costs. The main benefit of having a heavy manual process is potential for customizability, whereas automated processes are typically more standardized and less flexible.
Design for Installation / Assembly
Design for Installation refers to a set of design techniques that consider factors such as ease of setup and configuration, compatibility with existing equipment and infrastructure, and safety during the installation process. Design for Assembly (DFA) is a set of design techniques that make a product easier to assemble, both at the initial manufacturing stage as well as during customer assembly.
Considerations (not exhaustive):
- Location of install / assembly (e.g., physical location constraints, compatibility with standard tools or equipment)
- Maneuverability (e.g., product weight, orientation, packaging)
- Assembly complexity (e.g., expertise required v. available, mapping from CAD data to actual assembly instructions, minimizing number of manual processes)
- Part count (e.g., balancing of part complexity and number of parts, parts redundancy, risk of human error)
- Safety (e.g., physical capabilities of target user group aligned with assembly need)
How to find assembly / install opportunities for a product:
Read the manual: Short of actually assembling or installing the product, review the owner’s manual for assembly / installation instructions. This can help you identify areas where the manual process may be overly complex, parts count or weight could be reduced, etc. Also, put on your fellow human hat for a moment, see if you can understand how to put this thing together! You might also look at user reviews and forums to see if customers are raising repeat concerns about this step of the process.
Individual part analysis: A major consideration in assembly is part count, or the number of parts in an assembled product. This can be assessed by looking at the bill of materials and mapping out each step required for assembly. For example, if you are competing against a product with 50 parts that involve multiple manual assembly processes, you might look for ways to simplify this, potentially through the use of consolidated, modular, or interchangeable parts.
Design for Sustainability
Design for Sustainability is a set of design techniques that consider long-term environmental impact, including aspects of health and safety, material use, energy consumption, etc.
Considerations (not exhaustive):
- Raw materials selection (e.g., sourcing from renewable resources or waste streams)
- Energy efficiency (e.g., minimizing the impact on existing infrastructure, minimizing energy needed for installation, compatibility with local building codes)
- Parts reusability and repairability (e.g., ease of disassembly, modularity, compatibility with refurbishment processes)
- Materials recycling (e.g., cross-compatibility with recycling processes and equipment)
How to find sustainability opportunities for a product:
Analyze sustainability claims: A growing trend in the consumer marketplace is for companies to make claims about their product’s sustainability. Whether or not these claims are accurate, they can provide a useful starting point for assessing how companies (read: your competitors) are thinking about environmental impact. For example, you might look at whether products have recycled parts, are sourced from renewable materials, etc. From there, you can try to tease out sustainable design opportunities.
High-level cradle-to-grave assessment: A cradle-to-grave assessment is a method for measuring the environmental impact of a product from raw material extraction to final disposal. See if you can build hypotheses around which steps of product processes are / will be most resource intensive, emissions heavy, etc. Are there places your product could do better than the standard here?
Design for Supply Chain
Design for supply chain refers to a set of design techniques that take into account factors such as inventory management, supplier relationships, and logistics considerations.
Considerations (not exhaustive):
- Supplier strategy (e.g., long-term partnerships vs. short-term contracts, geographic strategy)
- Inventory management (e.g., optimizing inventory levels to minimize stock outs or to minimize waste)
- Resiliency and risk (e.g., lead times, developing contingency and backup plans to minimize the impact of disruptions or delays, single sourcing v. dual / multi sourcing)
- Logistics considerations (e.g., storage, transport, distribution networks)
How to find supply chain opportunities for a product:
Redundant parts / redundant sources assessment: Increased redundancy is less risky in terms of supply chain. If you have a product with 8 different types of screw from 8 different suppliers (all single sourced), for example, you are more likely to face a sourcing issue than if you had 4 different types of screw that can each be sources from 2 suppliers in your network (all dual sourced). Now these aren’t the only two options for this screw set up obviously, but is illustrative of the concept. Redundancies reduce risk (and also simplify manufacturing / quality / repair network). Look for places to leverage the same (or a slightly modified) part, over and over.
Analyze storage and transit model: Understand if inventory mgmt. strategy is just in time v. just in case. Deduce (or decide) where production, warehousing, and distribution is occurring. Depending on how this is set up — there will likely be an associated monetary or time cost to users. Is this optimized for user needs / level of demand? Is there an opportunity to do this differently?
Supplier network assessment: Assess if a company’s supply chain is appropriate for needs. This could include factors such as supplier network size, individual supplier size, sourcing strategy, partnership v. contracts, geographic assessment (proximity v. cost), etc.
Being user-first: the reprise
As I have plastered all over this blog, users come first. The above levers are meant to provide some additional color for ways to improve existent products or identify gaps in the current solutions across different parameters. As always, user research should dictate which parameters ultimately take priority. And especially as a new product who will be looking for rapid growth and adoption, user experience should be top of mind.
