Great news to hear of the new plans which aims to turn Liverpool into a global centre for life sciences research.
http://www.merseybio.com/news/newsitem.asp?recordid=3417
With many years experience collaborating with North West based biotech businesses, it would be fantastic for us to see this sector boosted by the planned Liverpool Bio Innovation Centre.
Best of luck to all involved for a successful outcome.
What is success? To different people it means different things, but for our clients successful product development usually means commercial return on investment. They know product development costs time and money, but they know it can lead to long term profit for their business.
1) Know your market – This includes understanding the motivations of your potential customers, and knowing your ‘route to market’. Its easy to assume an good idea will turn into a successful product. If you have a sales team talking to customers they should know what end users want, and if there are any un-answered needs that could be exploited.
If you don’t have this close contact then you need to speak to a cross section of potential users. Not friends and relatives, people who wouldn’t mind telling you the truth! How do they currently solve the problem your product aims to solve? Do they even experience the problem? What is a solution worth? Who would they trust to solve it for them?
You also need to understand the pricing structure associated with your route to market. How much profit does a retailer want? Is a distributor the best way to go? A retail buyer is a great source of information, both in terms of pricing, and in knowing what their customers want.
2) Invest in skill and experience – Bringing a product to market requires a range of skills including market assessment, planning, design, protecting intellectual property, production, marketing, and sales. Each link in the chain is critical, and should be delivered by the right persons. Communication between disciplines is also important as each will have different reasons for wanting the product to be a certain way. If everyone understands the others drivers and concerns, they can collaborate closely to reach a common goal. Success is driven by the leader of such a team. Entrepreneurs are often highly skilled in motivating people, they can sell their vision of ‘the bigger picture’ to the people who are needed to make it happen.
The team may only be one or two people, or hundreds, but the basic principals remain the same.
3) Test and refine your concept - The story of James Dyson making over 1000 prototypes to refine his bag-less vacuum cleaner is often quoted. This is an extreme case, but a period of prototyping, testing and refining is key to optimising a product. This cycle could be repeated indefinitely as refinement is an ongoing process. The point at which to move on to the next stage in development is when the criteria set out in your design specification has been met, and all stake-holders in the project are behind the idea and will back it with the necessary vigour for it to succeed.
A production look-a-like prototype is great for gauging opinion on price from potential customers. Your target price should already be known, but would people pay that for your design? Could you charge more because the design team has added some ingenious new features?
4) Tell the right people – Create a buzz around your new product. Can you identify an opinion maker or respected figure in your product sector? A positive review from such a person can help to ‘de-risk’ your new, unknown product and bring it to the attention a wider audience.
Sometimes new regulations force people to look for new solutions. If you can anticipate such events it can be a great opportunity as customers suddenly become legally obliged to purchase something that meets the new rules.
Forums are great for spreading the word amongst specific consumer groups, such as new mothers, or DIY enthusiasts. If you have helped someone to solve a problem in a new and improved way, they may want to share this good news with other like minded individuals.
Trade shows and exhibitions are the time when key people in certain industries are in one place at one time seeking out what’s new in the market.
Magazines are on the look out for things that would interest their readership. Not blatant adverts for your great new product, but well written informative copy that seeks to inform and/or entertain the reader. There’s nothing to stop anyone writing a press release and sending it in for consideration, but someone with experience in PR and marketing will have a higher success rate in getting things to print. Shopping chanels are also on the look out for something new they can sell to their viewers.
5) Deliver – So you have gone to all the effort to develop and produce a great new product. Whoever you are selling to wont remain loyal for long if you don’t deliver your goods on time and to expected quality levels. Retail buyers need to keep shelves stocked, so if you let them down they may have no choice but to replace your product with one from a more reliable supplier. Remember that people buy off people, so maintain good relationships.
We attended a very interesting event organised by the Virtual Engineering Centre at Darsbury Science and Innovation Campus.
Cutting edge virtual engineering and simulation facilities are available to support our design team, which we can utilise on our clients projects to solve complex engineering issues at no additional cost.
4D Products where delighted to be invited into Liverpool John Moores University to talk to the Product Design course about career opportunities in design.
LJMU School of Art and Design had invited well known representatives from creative industries from the North West region including Product Design, Interior Design, and Costume Design to name just a few.
We wish the next crop of Liverpools Product Designers all the best in their future careers!
‘I don’t need to do much research’
You could go on researching forever, and at some point you need to take action to move your project forward or put a line through it and move onto the next thing. But as a minimum you should be satisfied that there is a real market need for your product. What do total strangers think? How is the problem currently solved? How many people are experiencing the problem? Is my idea better or cheaper or faster than current solutions? How would I pitch this idea as really useful to a potential user in just a few sentences?
‘I need to file a patent right away’
We would advise people to explore the best method of protecting their product idea in parallel to discussing it with a professional designer under confidentiality. If they are good they will challenge your ideas, improve on them, and bring exciting new ideas to the table which can add commercial value to the product. When you have the best solution to the problem, you can protect it in the most suitable way. Patents, design rights, registered designs, registered trade names / logos and copyright are all to be considered. If you do this without optimising the design, you risk protecting an idea that isn’t as good as it might be, and allowing competitors to easily improve on your offering.
‘I know what I want, I don’t need to pay for professional designers’
As previously mentioned, a good designer should pay for themselves many times over when the product goes to market. How so? By optimising the product, reducing its build and set-up costs, making it more attractive to the end user, and therefore securing more sales.
‘I don’t need to spend money on prototyping’
Too often people see prototyping as an expense that they would prefer to avoid. In reality it is the best opportunity you will get to learn about, and improve your product prior to costly manufacturing set up and production runs.
A good designer will present a range of prototyping options which are most suitable to you at the time. Don’t spend thousands on vacuum castings just to see how big something looks on the desk, you can find that out with a block model made from foam board.
‘My product will be great, it will sell itself!’
People have lots of choice and limited budgets. They also tend towards the familiar, buying things that have suited their purposes previously. In order to sell your new product, you need to get it in front of potential buyers and very quickly communicate why they should choose your product over someone else’s. This often comes down to clearly demonstrated benefits to a business or end user, and an acceptable price.
An e-commerce website can be great, but how are you going to drive traffic to it?
Whatever route you choose, you will need to get the marketing message right, and make the buying process as hassle and risk free as possible.
If you aren’t a seasoned sales person, should someone else be doing it? You might want to consider selling or licensing your idea to an existing business with established routes to market.
Get in touch with 4D Products if you want success in New Product Development.
4D Products will be making an appearance at this years Liverpool Design Festival with their snapswall photo display system. The show runs from the 6th – 9th October at Liverpools St Georges Hall. A great show case for Product design, homewares, and designer makers alike.
See http://www.liverpooldesignfestival.com/ for further details
Today’s consumer is much more discerning about the objects they surround themselves with. The well known consumer brands at the forefront of this movement invest heavily in product design.
These ‘consumer design’ techniques are being applied to more and more technical and industrial products for use outside of the home environment. The underlying technology works, but in an environment where virtually every buyer has choice, the product must stand out from the crowd and present itself as visually appealing, usable, and engaging.
Our clients benefit not only by creation of an attractive new design, but are also supplied with photo quality visuals of the product before it has been manufactured. A great marketing tool for generating interest and connecting with potential users and purchasers.
Get in touch if you would like your products to stand out from the crowd.
Designing a great new product is one thing, but how do you get it to market?
We recently exhibited our snapswall photo holders at PULSE 2011 in London. Some great enquiries are now being processed from retailers and distributors in the UK and Eire.
We recently designed a piece of sports training equipment. Early on in the project the question arose, ‘How many features should I include in my product?’
The client was keen to pack as much functionality into the product as possible, giving the user every feature possible, whilst still aiming for an acceptable retail price.
Whilst the client wanted to wow their customers and was passionate about improving the sporting skills of the users, the business case suggested the best way to proceed was to create a modular system, whereby a base level unit could be offered at an attractive price and extra elements sold as add-ons, generating ongoing revenue.
If this is not possible, and price points dictate you can’t include every last feature then you need a way of deciding the best course of action.
A Product Design Matrix is a method of scoring various elements of a design, allowing stake holders to sort features by how important they are to the finished products success. You can also assess two concepts side by side to see which scores highest for the most desirable aspects.
Our advice would be to write a specification detailing every feature and function you think the end product needs to deliver. Give each requirement a score, and decide whether it is a must have feature. We would always endeavour to deliver every feature within the target manufacturing cost, but if this is not technically feasible then you need to go through a process of elimination. What can you leave out whilst still maintaining the perceived value of the finished product? Don’t get personal. Get feedback from your potential customers, do they really need a TV built into that new toaster you are developing? Would they pay extra for it?
Get in touch if you would like to apply our proven design techniques to your product development project.
0151 3240038
Daresbury Innovation Centre,
Keckwick Lane, Daresbury,
Cheshire WA4 4FS
