What is Concepting?
What is concepting? Well, if you are still wondering what it is then this is for you. You’ll learn about concepting for product design.
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The Conscious Design™ blog, podcast, and YouTube channel is your guide to understanding the product development process, branding, and starting up a company. Whether inventor, designer, or entrepreneur, we have content to help you be successful. Written primarily by Ian Peterman, our CEO, founder, and Conscious Design expert, this blog pulls from his and our team’s extensive experience and history with startups, products, and brands as we seek to build conscious brands and products. We hope you enjoy this content and learn something valuable through it. Let’s make your vision a reality.
What is concepting? Well, if you are still wondering what it is then this is for you. You’ll learn about concepting for product design.
Protecting your idea doesn’t always mean getting a patent. It depends on the situation.
Project brief vs scope of work. What do they mean? They are close, but don’t mean the exact same thing. Both are important to understand.
As the Internet of Things has grown over the years, smart products have become a pretty hot item. Many people have product ideas for turning a “dumb” product into a “smart” one. It’s great, I love that we are improving our tools and gadgets in so many new and interesting ways. Technology is something that amazes me, and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life. For a lot of people, it might seem like a fairly simple task to just add some electronics to a product and make it smart. You should understand what you or your business will need to developing such a product. You might have gotten an idea about what it really takes in our post a couple weeks ago Time, Budgets, & Luxury, but I’d like to dive more into exactly what it takes to create a smart product. There is a lot of time and effort that is beyond what low-tech products need to become a reality. For us, “smart” is anything that contains electronics that can connect to other electronics, so wi-fi, Bluetooth, NFC, USB, etc, usually there are sensors or other input points that collect data to be shared with other devices. Putting a motor into a mower doesn’t make it “smart”. Putting a computer on board with internet access, connected to an app would make it “smart”. A “smart” product doesn’t always have to touch the internet either, there are many closed circuit smart devices. IOT (internet of things) products MUST touch the internet however. In no particular order, here is a breakdown of everything that goes into developing a “smart” product. This will give you an idea of what you can expect if you choose to dive into this process. Disciplines required Most “dumb” products can get away with just an Industrial Designer or Mechanical Engineer. Both work, but you can read more about the differences in our post3 Things You Should Know About Designers & Engineers. No electronics means no coders, no electrical engineers, and many others. If you are working with basic electronics, such as motors, switches, etc, you can sometimes avoid getting an electronics person involved. BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet There are many mechanical side people who can make that happen. Now, if we’re creating a “smart” product, we will need these: App Design & Development Electronics Design Electrical Manufacturing Web Design & Development There are possibly a few others depending on how big you go, such as database development, but these areas would cover most of the work needed to get the project done. Time It can easily double the amount of time to design and develop a new product by adding in electronics that would make a product “smart”. Does this mean it would take longer on a calendar? Not necessarily. When we can, we prefer to do side-by-side development of the mechanical and electrical. This ensures both sides work together and keeps the timeline shorter. The collaboration between mechanical and electrical can really build some synergy with the project. The result is that issues can be caught earlier, avoiding them from popping up super late in the process where it’s harder and more expensive to fix. Cost BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Double the time, at least double the cost. Electronics are usually more expensive to prototype. The benefit is the manufacturing on the back end makes super components, even fully custom ones. These products also sell for a higher premium than their “dumb” counter parts. Planning Working on more complex projects such as this involves a lot more planning and project management. Here at the Peterman Design Firm, that is one of our core competencies. You need to make sure the firm you work with has experienced Project Managers on its team. They also need to be able to handle the load required to bring such a product to life. BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Network We’ve talked about how important your network is in our last post Building Your Network for Success. This is a place where it really matters as you need so many resources to get the project completed. If you are working with some of the very large and expensive firms out there, they probably have such a large in-house team they can handle most things, but you pay for it. Medium sized firms often still have the network and don’t do everything in-house. Small ones and freelancers don’t always have the network you need and are often still building them. The caveat of course is if they have been in business for 20 plus years, they probably have a good network. Feasibility Study BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet I put this here just because people like to skim, and this is a key part. Feasibility studies should never be skipped with products in this category. A feasibility study is very important to do at the beginning of your project. The firm you choose to use should be able to offer this service by itself. Don’t commit to full development until you know it can be done. A complete feasibility study from the Peterman Design Firm will give you cost expectations for the entire project, time frame, potential issues, project duration estimation and breakdown, and some market information on competitors. If you’d like to learn more about feasibility studies, check out our post What’s a Feasibility Study? When you have a great idea for a “smart” product, it’s at least worth getting a consultation on the idea. If your budget can handle it, a feasibility study would be valuable. Then if it looks good, invest the money. The great thing with “smart” products is that they are in high demand. Plus we seem to be on an exponential growth with them. For now, it’s a trend I feel will stay with us for a while, if not permanently. Your Next Steps Developing Smart Products What does it take to develop a smart product?
A feasibility study is a very important step in making sure a product will be successful. I break down what they are and why they matter.
There are many things to look for when selecting the right developer to partner with. Experience, skill sets, niche expertise, team size, and many others come to mind to compare. Something that may not always come to mind is the network and other resources your developer can bring to the table. This doesn’t just mean manufacturers or graphic designers. It means investors, marketers, business development, coaches, web developers, app developers, and more. The list of potential experts that may be needed is almost limitless. Because you need the right experts to make your product or business successful, these networks are important. Don’t be afraid to discuss other needs outside of just the product development. At the Peterman Design Firm, we want our clients to be as successful as possible. I’ve built a solid network that grows daily through years of networking and building relationships. Rather than go and have to build your own network, find someone who has a good one! You’ll find the best development partners will have done the same. These are people and businesses that I know and trust to deliver whatever I need for my clients so the project is a success. With our network we can support you through every stage, concept to profit. Types of Resources There are several key resources most startups and inventors need outside product design. They are: Graphic Design, Website Design, Marketing, Business Advice/Coaching, and Attorneys. Of course there are many others, but these are the most common from our experience. Make sure that whoever you work with can help you with solid referrals for these areas. BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Small & Medium Businesses First, if you are a small to medium sized business, you probably don’t have an internal department for everything. Because of this, working with a single point of contact is very desirable. It makes it easier to manage the project. Plus, some of the management is outsourced. Working with a firm like the Peterman Design Firm gives you the option of having someone else take on the project management. This allows you to focus on the results and end goal, not worrying about the day to day items. Development firms like ours who have a large network of resources for our clients can provide a very large benefit that you might not even think about at the beginning stages. Because we care about our client’s success. Large Businesses BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Secondly, even large businesses benefit from offloading project management and sourcing to an outside firm. This allows their PMs to do what they need to and manage multiple projects more easily. Because of this, ongoing overhead can be reduced. Smart business means having a large well curated network that can handle any tasks and projects. Talk to your potential developer about their network and how they support you through the entire process. With the right developer, you’ll have a large network to help you through the entire process, a real partner. Getting the team you need to be successful is sometimes as easy as just finding the right person with the right network for you. Your Next Steps Developing Smart Products What does it take to develop a smart product? Develop a Smart Product The Peterman Method™ Learn about the Peterman Method and download your own copy Peterman Method™ Related Conscious Design BLOG Posts Author Mr. Peterman View all posts
You might be wondering why luxury is in the title of our blog post, but first I want to share my two favorite questions from clients. How much? How long? In product development, these questions almost always come up. Prepare to find the secret answer to these questions! To start, let’s talk about what you invest into a project besides just money. It’s a short list of one. Your time. That’s about it. You don’t need to put anything else into developing a product when you hire the right team. Hire the wrong team, and of course the cost goes up in time and money. The point of paying someone else is to minimize your time to the least required amount for the most effective results. What does this mean exactly? It means answering questions directly and quickly, providing feedback when needed, and making the decision at each check-point to make sure you are still happy with the investment and you want to proceed. As long as it’s green lights from you through the entire process, then you will get a fully developed product if it’s humanly (or robotically) possible for production. Now, wait for it. A little more. One. Second. More. Alright, here’s the answer I give everyone, and this is a ballpark. If you have a low to mid complexity consumer product, with no electronics, you are probably looking at between $10,000 and $50,000 to get your product from an idea to production ready, not including any prototype costs. Now, did you notice how many conditions I had to put on that range? Three, and it’s a ball park guesstimate. Let that sink in. Here’s a second range: $25,000 to $150,000 for low to mid complexity electronic product development. What if you want an app for your product? Add at least another $20,000 in app design/development costs. And what are these numbers? These are just averages based on my experience of working in the industry for over 15 years. I’ve seen projects with a budget of $3,000 and ones with multi-million-dollar development cycles. Now, does that mean your product idea will always sit nicely these ranges? No. It’s impossible to know what your product will take to develop until it’s fully understood. That’s why the Peterman Design Firm sends out a Scope of Work to every person wanting an estimate. And we ask what the budget is. The other part of budgeting is that two people with the same idea could be wanting or able to invest different amounts of money into the development process. Nike is going to spend way more developing a new shoe than a start-up brand who doesn’t have the capitol. Apple is going to spend more developing a new device because it’s a luxury product compared to other brands. So, this makes us ask a question, does a higher budget mean you’ll get a better product? Well, the answer is maybe. Does it get you more concepts, clearer market research, more manufacturing options, and the ability to make more changes along the way? Yes. A $1,000,000 project will get more time put into developing the product than a $20,000 project will. As a general rule, you can achieve 80% completion with the first 20% of investment. The Peterman Design Firm usually tries to follow this 80/20 rule when creating proposals for those who don’t have big budgets, or are tight on time, typically the startups. This means instead of spending 100 hours getting something 100% perfect, the Peterman Design Firm spends 20 hours and get the product to 80% perfect. This of course is a general “rule” that applies to everything in the world, working smarter, not more expensive. What does that mean for you? You pay 20% of what high end companies would spend developing the product you want to go to market with. What products get 100% perfect? The ones that have companies willing to pay 5 times more to get the same product designed. Think Apple or Samsung, today the proof is between many other smartphones that work great, do everything needed, but miss the finer details on some points compared to Apple or Samsung. These are 80% products. Often the products that most people buy and can afford, and therefore have the greatest market interest, are 50% to 80% products. They work, but aren’t perfect, they are not luxury. So, the question is: are you a luxury brand or not? If you are and want to be so, then be ready to invest like one, and spend the money to get to 100% perfection. That’s something the Peterman Design Firm can do for you. I’ve worked on luxury/high end products, and general consumer ones, and I love working on both types. If you aren’t a luxury brand, then let’s be smart about your investment, maximize it, and get your product developed in the most effective way possible. Author Mr. Peterman View all posts
I can’t tell you how many clients have come to me saying they need help developing a prototype to get funding or the feedback they need to finish developing the product.
Where do you go to find developers? Well, many people do that in all the wrong places. There are many job sites for freelancers, and sometimes businesses. Then there are more reputable places to find higher end developers and firms. These have all the skills and tools required to really develop your product. Last but not least, there are the places people go where almost no good designers are. When I was starting out, I started on Craigslist and other free places I could put an ad on or look for projects I could work on. The price of course was I couldn’t charge much for what I did and the jobs weren’t bit. I did get a lot of work because those places are where most startups look! To save you from only looking in one place, I’ve put this post together! I’d like to help you in looking in the best places, not just craigslist. (Yes, I’ve gotten a lot of work from there, but I’ve also seen a lot of my clients get burned through low end developers and designers there and other cheap places). *DISCLAIMER: To be clear there are some great people on all of these places, these are generalized for what quality and type of developer you will find in each area. If you are willing to look for diamonds in the rough, go for it. Also know that there are firms who look great and are in all the right places, but can’t actually follow through. I built an entire design firm off of Craigslist earlier in my career, but I outgrew it as I got the experience needed to do so. The places not to go! Forums, chat rooms, and craigslist are the bottom of the list of where to find great developers typically. Sure, you can sometimes find them. A lot of people who don’t know where to start developing their product turn to these places. The skill pool however is mostly college students, low experience workers, and startup firms. If you are looking for someone to do the work for free and are ready to pay the price for free work, then these are the types of places to go. BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Places you can go but you still have to filter. Freelance websites, these range all over the place. There’s the usually super cheap fiverr, where many services start at only $5. Upwork is another one, more reputable, but still just outsourcing to cheaper labor pools. It’s easy to find cheap developers in these places. I’ve been a part of many different sites like this and have explored both sides of the equation. What I see is that these sites charge money to developers to attempt to begin a bidding war over your project. It’s great for you, you get lots of options, have no financial worries because of the sites terms, and usually you can find people able to do the work you need at lower costs. As a developer, or many other services there, it’s a giant price war. I’ve gone back and forth on having a presence in the top few sites for my firm, the larger sites also offer firms and groups the ability to do work there. Right now, you won’t find me active on any of these sites. To much price war for me. The best are here. BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet There are a few places where the best get themselves added to. The Design Directory is one of my top 3 places to find other development firms. Dexigner Directory is another favorite that has a large range of firms and is another place where top firms are listed. Clutch is probably top of the three. They actually phone interview your clients to get verified testimonials, which is great for you the client. This doesn’t mean that everyone in these directories is an expensive top 5 firm for each category. What it does mean is that a human has reviewed each of these firms/designers and approved them. They can also remove listings if and when they decide. These directories are only as good as the quality of their listings, so it’s in their interest to have good firms. The best place to find top quality services is to find out who the top 5 firms are in your industry or needed service. From there, see who else is there and you should have a few options. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a good meter to see where the best is. There are outliers in each of these places, both great and terrible. No magic way to filter everything. This will give you at least an idea on where you’ll have the most success finding what you are looking for. Your Next Steps Developing Smart Products 5 Common Issues When Hiring a Product Developer product developer product development What Do You Bring to a Developer develop Related Conscious Design BLOG Posts Author Mr. Peterman View all posts
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