Designing a new product from scratch is no easy undertaking. It’s a complex process that involves a multifaceted approach to creativity, engineering services, prototyping, manufacturing, and marketing techniques. The actual design process varies widely depending on the type of product in question. For example, a medical device will require much more rigorous testing and safety certification than a toy.
Cad Crowd is an industry leader who has helped engineering and manufacturing companies use freelancing to turn their product designs into a reality. This article explores product design and all you need to keep in mind as you develop it.
🚀 Table of contents
Product design checklist
The good thing is that no matter what product you want to make, the design process follows the same basic guidelines as listed in the following checklist.
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| Product ideas You can start with rudimentary hand-drawn sketches on paper to illustrate ideas. It doesn’t have to be fully detailed, as long as it can represent the basic geometry, layout, and dimension. The most important thing is that the sketch helps you identify design strengths and weaknesses. If necessary, add annotations like key features and materials. | Idea selection: not every idea that comes up during the brainstorming step will be used and developed further. A selection process in which everybody is involved will pick only the ideas that actually meet the predetermined specification. Business goals, market potential, and budget/resource requirements must be put into account as well. |
| Prioritization: large companies with sizable financial strength might be able to afford to develop two or more ideas at once. For a small company, it’s best to stick with the most technically feasible idea of the bunch to improve efficiency. | |
| Prioritization: large companies with sizable financial strength might be able to afford developing two or more ideas at once. For a small company, it’s best to stick with the most technically feasible idea of the bunch to improve efficiency. | |
| Market research An analysis of the business landscape to understand how to position the product in an increasingly competitive market. | Target market identification: you cannot devise a marketing strategy without knowing exactly which market segment you’re targeting with the product. Market identification includes demographic data such as buying tendencies or behaviors, geographical considerations, and spending characteristics (luxury, value for money, affordability), to name a few. |
| Customer needs: a good grasp of customer needs allows you to identify opportunities by means of offering solutions to the problems. You may gather the information by conducting interviews, surveys, and focus groups. If you design the research well enough, you should gain an understanding of your target customers’ pain points and preferences. | |
| Competitive research: It’s not impossible that your future products will be similar to some existing ones in the market. In such a case, make sure to conduct a proper evaluation of their price range, features, advantages, and drawbacks so your product can differentiate itself from every alternative or competitor. | |
| Detailed specifications Based on the previous two steps, outline the design specification in detail. There should be enough information in this step to build a prototype. | Product characteristics: define the design aesthetic and ergonomic aspect. You will need a better visualization than a simple sketch on paper. Use CAD software services to make a digital drawing where you can clearly see the shape, dimension, color, materials, and interface (if any). |
| Features: all the expected features and functionalities must be well-defined at this step. Everything is intended to provide a solution to an existing problem and address customer needs. If you can’t offer all the demanded features due to technical challenges or budget limitations, prioritize creating good value for money. | |
| Timeline: The important thing is not to get overly ambitious with the development timeframe. Setting an unrealistic timeline may put a strain on the creative process, but at the same time, there needs to be a sense of urgency. Knowing the design teams’ capabilities and resource availability is the key to good balance. | |
| Roadmap Now that you’ve gone through all the early steps. It’s time to plan a roadmap consisting of targeted milestones, expected timeline, and calculated resource allocations for all the next phases. | Milestones: divide the entire development process into multiple milestones to help you keep track of how far you’ve achieved at any given time. There’s no rule to govern how many milestones to include, so feel free to get creative with the plan. |
| Resource planning: it’s not merely about financial, but also human and technological resources. Organize all the tasks involved based on their level of importance and set the resource allocation accordingly. A task that has a high level of impact on overall progress should sit at a higher position in the priority scale than any trivial matter. | |
| Conceptual: the simplest form of prototype, which mainly serves as a proof of concept. It can be made from easily available materials like wood or clay. The main purpose of a conceptual prototype is to visualize the basic structure of the product. | |
| Prototyping The journey from alpha to beta and, ultimately, the final version is an iterative process that involves rigorous testing, user feedback, refinements, and improvements until the product meets the desired quality and standards. | Functional: unlike a conceptual prototype that simply mimics the appearance of a product, a functional model must be able to simulate the features and functionality of the final product. It must be made of the same materials as the intended final version. Think of it as a beta model; it has everything that a final version does, except that it still needs some small improvements. |
| Testing and validation Think of it as a QA (Quality Assurance) process to identify possible design flaws, safety concerns, and performance issues so you can improve the design before taking it to mass production. | |
| Pre-production: despite having the visuals and functionality of the final version, you can’t (yet) call it the final version. The prototype will be subjected to advanced testing and certifications (if necessary) to validate the final design and manufacturability. | |
| Testing and validation Think of it as a QA (Quality Assurance) process to identify possible design flaws, safety concerns, and performance issues, so you can improve the design before taking it to mass production. | Functionality test: all individual features are tested to make sure the product meets the desired functionality parameters. |
| Usability test: ease of use and the overall user experience are evaluated to eliminate concerns about user satisfaction. | |
| Performance evaluation: it might be the most rigorous testing as you are required to assess the product performance under adverse conditions such as extreme temperatures (hot and cold), peak usage, abuse, and rough handling, among others. At the end of the evaluations, the product must remain usable and work as intended. | |
| Safety test: some products (including electronics) must meet certain safety standards enforced by regulatory bodies such as CE marking in Europe and FCC in North America. | |
| Marketing strategy Define your key messages, including value propositions and positionings, to set your product apart from competitors. Most importantly, the messages must resonate with your target demographics. | Marketing channels: every company has its own marketing techniques to improve brand presence and engage the target audience. In most cases, you need to determine the most effective marketing channels to attract potential customers. This may include traditional channels (print, TV ads, and offline events) and digital channels (search engine marketing, social media, emails, and e-commerce). |
| Product launch Logistics and customer service preparation. | Business readiness: launching a product is more than just making the announcement that it’s available for purchase on social media or e-commerce sites. You need to be ready with inventory management, customer service, warranty service, returns and refunds, feedback documentation, etc. |
| Feedback generation Analytic tools and analysis. | Continuous development: like prototyping, the entire process of expert product design is also an iterative process in which you keep on improving based on feedback. You should be able to solicit input from users, stakeholders, and designers to gain actionable insights for future development. |
| Updates and improvements: the next product iteration should prove to be better than the current version as a testament that you actually care about your customers and listen to their feedback. |
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Just about every invention starts with a brilliant idea. But it certainly takes a lot of dedication to materializing the idea into a workable design through a series of processes that require meticulous attention to detail. Be that as it may, no product is 100% perfect. It’s either lackluster but cheap, exquisite yet with a high price tag, or somewhere in between. It’s not uncommon that expert product engineers and companies have to settle with some compromises to get the best balance between affordability and quality. And the design checklist above is meant to prevent you from making uninformed decisions about what compromises to make.
The design checklist may look like just another set of tasks that you need to accomplish in order. While it might be true, every point in the list helps lay the groundwork to build a strategic plan that covers all the steps from the early ideation phase to product launch and beyond. Think of the checkboxes as milestones to mark your progress in the undertaking, and or perhaps track records that you can revisit in the future when you’re ready to design another product.
Welcome to Cad Crowd, home to product design experts
We all can agree that designing a completely new product is easier said than done. Many products of all types, whether from startups or big accompanies alike, have failed to impress customers and turned out to be a waste of resources. But countless others have been successful and making enormous profits. As an industry leader, Cad Crowd is here to help you set up a collaboration with some of the most talented product design professionals from all over the country. Give Cad Crowd a call for a free quote today.
