At Interactual, we love to get involved early in product development. However, we rarely get the chance! The process of design is far more accessible and democratised than ever before. Capable free CAD packages, cheap 3D printers and electronic development tools such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi have made it possible for anyone with basic practical skills and common sense to develop a product through to a first demonstrator without requiring much in the way of outside assistance.
This can be a two-edged sword. In the same way that the rise of self-publication of music or literature has led to an explosion of extremely average media, a lack of external intervention in design can lead to a lack of critical analysis and inventor bias.
There also comes a point in the development process when common sense is no longer enough and further development requires a lot of specialist knowledge. Critically, it also requires the design team to begin to transition from febrile start-up hustling to the more formalised, measured, and systematic approach required for Design for Manufacturing (DfM)
This transition point presents 2 primary challenges: -
What specialist skills are required as the project moves forward and how do you fill these skills gaps (external capability vs upskilling the current team)? It can be challenging even to identify what skills are needed, let alone know how best to acquire those skills.
Is your current team capable of transitioning? Some founders love the hustle but bridle at the more structured development demanded by DfM. It may not be efficient or simply not professionally rewarding for the same team to continue the development all the way to production.
To help start-ups and founders make the transition, Interactual’s approach is firstly to stress test the development up to the point at which we have been approached. We typically ask 3 questions: -
1. Does it meet a clearly defined user need?
2. Is it technically feasible?
3. Is it commercially viable?
If, by asking these questions, we haven’t already killed the project, we then seek to identify the highest risks in the project and create a nascent risk register. Once the major project risks are known, the skills required to mitigate the risks can be identified and the skills gap becomes evident. Interactual sees itself as a design and support service – we only seek to fill the gaps within a client’s internal team. Moreover, we want our clients to own the secret sauce and so, as much as possible, we seek to train our clients to undertake as much of the DfM process as possible and equip them to critically evaluate the work of external specialists.
Most importantly, we train our clients in the implementation of simple process tools that are the foundations and building blocks of a future risk and quality managed design and production process and, by doing so, gently transition our clients out of start-up mode.
Drop us a message if you are interested to find out more - contact Benmay@interactual.co.uk