New product development starts with an idea, a brand new idea for a product or an improvement in the concept of an existing product (to improve on the product's usability, efficiency etc). However new product development is tough work and not many people will realise it. More often than not, inventors or researchers think that great ideas are all that they need to develop great products, which is very short sighted. Great products normally come from detailed research and a great product development process.
Market requirements, market trends are one such consideration. How is your product different from the rest of the products out there? What is your product's unique selling point? Is the trend moving towards slimmer footprint, simpler interface? or more complicated interface? Does your product needs more functions and features? Is your product for the consumer market whereby the product aesthetics is important (think iPhone, iPad)? Or is it targeted towards the industrial usage whereby ruggedization is required?
Product specifications is an important first step. Product specifications help you to think through and nail down the important product details so that they will serve as your directional signs to move forward in the product development process.Does your product run on batteries? or does it run through the mains? How long does the battery need to last? How many function keys or buttons does it need to have? Does it need to have an LED screen? Without proper product specifications, your product concept will be floating and subjected to changes and indecision, making the product development process extremely difficult. Be sure to nail down and decide on your product specification first before proceeding on.
Sometimes when you have a product concept but not sure whether your concept works, it would be necessary to start with a feasibility study. Let's say you have an idea to miniaturized the mobile phone into a device which can be worn like a watch on your wrist, then you would need to commission a technical or feasibility study to see whether this can be done. Are there any suitable batteries small enough to support normal phone usage but small enough to be able to fit into the watch sized device? What about the operating system needed as well as the associated hardware required? Will all these be small enough to fit into the watch? Let's say you managed to find all such components that are small enough to fit, what about the cost of the components? Will the cost make the product not feasible?
Another thing to consider is your productization strategy - how many units are you going to produce in the first run? 100 units as marketing samples? 1,000 units? Or your are so confident of your product that you intend to produce 100,000 units in the first run? Your productization strategy will determine the type of manufacturing process that you will need to use. Will you use low volume manufacturing process like vacuum forming, CNC machining etc to produce your products? Or will you use high volume techniques such as plastic injection moulding? Tooling cost vs part cost is a very real consideration for you. Typically if you are designing for high volume, tooling cost will be a huge investment but the part cost will be negligible and vice versa. I hope this article will shed some light into some of the things that you will need to consider when you want to develop a new product.
XentiQ Pte Ltd has been in the product design business since 1987. We have literally done hundreds of product design and development projects with MNCs, SMEs and high-tech start-ups. What has remained constant over the years is our track record for quality and creativity. The XentiQ design team has won the President's Design Award in 2007 and the prestigious international Red Dot design award in 2006 and twice in 2004.
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