Chair Ergonomics
Chair ergonomics are key to the health and productivity of people everywhere. Understanding ergonomics allows us to create better products.
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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.
Chair ergonomics are key to the health and productivity of people everywhere. Understanding ergonomics allows us to create better products.
We’ve talked about why you should hire out sourcing here, but in case you want to dive into this yourself, here are some things to look at. A common question when looking for manufacturers for your product is whether you want to source domestically or from overseas. You likely already know that it’s almost always cheaper to source your products overseas, but there’s a lot more to that decision than just the upfront investment and cost per unit. Things like quality, shipping, and time to delivery are other items to look at and can change how you might decide on a manufacturer. If you are just looking on your own, some of the best resources for finding manufacturers can be free online supplier directories. These directories can contain profiles for hundreds, or even thousands, of manufacturers, wholesalers and suppliers. There are many for domestic and overseas options. Looking through the sea of options can be a bit overwhelming. Making sure your idea is protected when discussing it and that the technical requirements are understood is very important when finding the right supplier for your product. As an area of expertise, we can support you through this and make sure those conversations are started with the right information. Domestic and overseas sourcing have their advantages and disadvantages which we will look at below: Domestic Advantages Higher manufacturing quality and labor standards Easier communication with no language barrier Marketing appeal of being made domestically Easier to verify reputable manufacturers Faster shipping time High intellectual property right protection Greater payment security and recourse BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Domestic Disadvantages Higher manufacturing costs Higher setup costs Less manufacturing type choice Overseas Advantages BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Lower manufacturing costs Lower setup costs High number of manufacturers to choose from One-stop services like Alibaba have made it easy to navigate suppliers Overseas Disadvantages Lower perceived quality from customers (Usually) lower manufacturing and labor standards Little intellectual property protection Language and communication barrier can be difficult to navigate Difficult/costly to verify manufacturer and visit on-site Longer shipping time Cultural differences in business practices Product importation and customs clearance Less payment security and recourse BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Things are changing in every market, and always will, making what would be a good decision today possibly be a bad one in the future. For the US market, Canada and Mexico also offer similar pros and cons as domestic, but the US dollar is stronger, so these are sometimes cheaper than the US. The costs of manufacturing in many countries in Asia is increasing, as is labor costs. When looking at the European manufacturing market there are many options that compete very well with US and Asian manufacturers. When researching options, it’s important to look at the specific needs of the product being made, where it’s being sold, and other logistics and costs that happen when taking a product from a manufacturing document to a product in consumers hands. We source the right suppliers and vendors for you and your product or business. 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
These are the top 5 things that have made projects easier to accomplish and more successful. Make sure you have these with your project to be as successful as possible.
Many inventors and entrepreneurs have asked me to get them just to the point where they can sell their idea. Nothing else. While it may seem like a simple request, and it is, it also doesn’t have the answer most people are looking for. The ideal time to sell is the same time you could start to get investors.
This has been covered over and over, but there is good reason for that. Defining the segment of the population you can best serve is important. Knowing your niche means you’ll know your market, what they want, how much they’ll spend, etc. Often, you’ll personally fit within this niche yourself if you are a start-up or entrepreneur. In larger businesses, or after the first product in a new company, you’ll often design products to fit into that same niche. Some very common products today came from niche products, they just got popular and are no longer used solely for their intended purpose. Take the carabiner, for example. It was invented by a German climber for, you guessed it, climbing. The idea of it being on backpacks and as a keychain for people who have quite possibly never gone even hiking, wasn’t even a thought for Otto Herzog, it’s inventor. It was a very niche product (estimated 2.7% of the American population in 2009 participated in some kind climbing or mountaineering) and far fewer people would need a carabiner rated for human use. One great reason to define your niche is to avoid wandering from it. Wandering from your niche can have disastrous brand repercussions, as some companies who have attempted to expand their market segment. It sometimes works but must be thought through. To even think that process through to know if it would work out well, you must know your niche. Product feature creep is something that can be avoided by knowing your niche. If you designed a product for snowboarders, maybe it could cross over to skiing, but would you want to factor in a diesel mechanics needs into your product? Probably not, I’d at least heavily advise against it unless you were targeting only snowboarders who are also diesel mechanics. It’s easy to try to make your product into a Swiss army knife, but that leads to excessive features that your core user won’t want or need. Good marketers and developers will ask you what your target market is, target user, etc. If you already know the niche you want to enter is, then right there a lot of the information required to properly design and develop a product. Through the development process, and then marketing, you might find that you do service a few niches. Bringing this kind of direction to your developer, or at least having an idea of it, will help the process of developing your product. It will also help your business and guide you toward success. Defining your niche is something you don’t have to do alone, but at least knowing a direction will help people help you define it. Author Mr. Peterman View all posts
Creating a new idea generally happens two ways. Both will get you a solid idea and solve a problem. Knowing both ways will help you.
When most people think of branding, they think of businesses getting logos, colors, fonts, etc. But products need this as well.
When working with a product developer, there are two types of programs you should be familiar with. While there are many options for each one, these two types of programs will help with communication between you and your developer. The first one is one you probably don’t have unless you work with people in 3D often, the other is common, but I’ve run into clients who didn’t use or were unfamiliar with them as well, mostly old school small businesses. 3D viewer You will need this for pretty much any physical product development anymore. While we might start out with sketches and PDFs, which you can make a 3D PDF too now, we quickly move into 3D now. Being able to view your developer’s 3D model from every angle, cross-sectioned, and hiding parts is essential to the review process. Many mid to high-end CAD packages have viewers that work with their software. It is also sometimes a good idea to ask your developer about simple CAD packages that are free/cheap that can open CAD files for you to review. We use SolidWorks primarily, and eDrawings is its free viewer. BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet File-Sharing Most people think of getting files from the developer, but it’s really a two-way street. You will want to send your initial documents to your developer, as well as feedback and other information in an easy way. Often these files are much larger than what an email can handle, so a file-sharing tool or service best meets these needs. There are many options here, far more than for the 3D viewers, so there is something for everyone. Setting up a shared “folder” with your developer where all files go to will keep things easy and straightforward for both of you and avoid losing any emails with files that you can’t find anymore. For this, we use Google Drive and Dropbox primarily. Talk with your developer, see what programs they use, and make sure everything is compatible. Good developers will set up file sharing through their preferred service, they pay for larger storage and more features than you would probably want to pay for. These tools, in addition to all the other programs and services we all use on an average day, will ensure you and your developer are able to communicate effectively. Your Next Steps Developing Smart Products What do you bring to a developer? Develop a Smart Product Modern Tools Tools of the Design World: Blender Blender Related Conscious Design BLOG Posts Author Mr. Peterman View all posts
Logically, you could figure out what Design for Manufacturability means in a broad sense. What does it really mean for you and your product? Design for Manufacturability, or DFM for short, is where Design meets Production. The DFM process takes a design and produces a final design that can be manufactured properly, and at the desired cost. This step is often skipped by those developing their first product. They end up costing more. Investing more on time and money than it should. We’ll go over some of what DFM does for your product and why it is a very key component to developing a great product. Manufacturability This is the first step in DFM. An engineer or designer takes a design and reviews it to ensure the product can be manufactured as efficiently and effectively as possible. Draft angles for injection molded parts, machinable areas for CNC, stacking tolerances, fit checks, and many more items are part of this DFM checklist. BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet Costing This is where things can get interesting, such as actually increasing part count, decreasing reusable parts, etc may be required to put a product into a certain price window. Costing looks at every cost of a product, from hardware selections, country of production, materials, and how each part needs to be made. A Sourcing Agent is closely tied into this part of the process, and works with the designer through this process. Part Count BLANK Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet How many parts does it take to make your product? I’ve worked on products ranging from just one to the thousands. A part count is a balancing act, sometimes you can make 4 parts into 1, but the cost would be 10 times greater. The part count is an easy way to estimate product complexity, assembly costs, et. Usually more is more expensive, and so a lot of work can be done to decrease the part count, make assembly easier, and take less time. Reuse and Replacement For those businesses who are sustainably minded, which every business should be, designing a product for reuse is something that happens in the DFM stage. Which components can be reused, which need to be replaced, even what parts can be recycled or not are also influence in the DFM process. Material and Finish blank Ian Peterman, CEO Tweet DFM also looks at what materials and finishes are used in a product. Sometimes a material might be chosen that doesn’t work well with a certain manufacturing process or is extra expensive. Changing a material, or finish can change the perceived quality, actual quality, and the cost of a product drastically. Lead time is also influenced by finishes as they add extra time to production. Lead Time A lead time of a product determines how quickly a business can turn its manufacturing investment into a profit. If it takes 10 weeks to produce a product, that means a business is going to wait at least 10 weeks before it gets paid. Decreasing lead time also falls within the DFM process. Shorter lead times mean quicker product turnaround, as well as usually less costly. Through selecting processes, materials, and finishes, the DFM process can save businesses from having long costly lead times on their products. Your Next Steps manufacturing Products Kickstarters and Manufacturing: What to Pay Attention to manufacturability Conscious Design Choosing a Manufacturer choose a manufacturer Related Conscious Design BLOG Posts Author Mr. Peterman View all posts
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