When developing a new idea it’s crucial to keep your idea secret especially in the early stages. This is vital for 2 reasons; one to avoid other people copying your idea, secondly if you want to patent your idea it cannot be made public before doing so.
In order to develop your idea, sometimes you will need to 
When you hear terms “Product Design” and “Design Engineering”, do you think of these as two separate services, or really as one activity?
The reason we ask is we’re rewriting our website to make the product design process clearer to real humans. We’ve seen other design agencies offering “Product design” and “Engineering” as separate services on their websites. We’re a bit confused by this, because under “engineering” they list things like “3D CAD”, “Structural Simulation”, “Design for manufacture” etc. As engineers ourselves, we just see this as things we do during the product design process. It seems a bit odd to us to split these out as something different, because that suggests Product Design is just the sketchy front end concept part.
What do you think? Are they right? Does this fit with your understanding of what we do, and it will be clearer if we split what we do into two separate services, being:
Any feedback on this would be a massive help – clarity is part of our mission in life!
Thank you!
Wondering whether to launch a new product? Feel the need to change the world, but not sure that you’re worthy? Perhaps you’re just waiting for some kind of sign, some words of wisdom from a bearded guru. Well here you go – in the words of Steve Jobs:
…Life can be much broader after you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life – was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. And you can build you own things that other people can use… Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.
Best if you watch Steve tell you this though:
It’s that time of year when everyone you know is telling you that they’ve written all their cards, and only have one more present to buy. It can get annoying can’t it!?
Well, there is just enough time to rely on Realise to help steer you towards some simple solutions, stress free, and on-line to avoid the crowds. If your favourite product designers can’t help you with some neat solutions, without the hassle, then who are you going to rely on!?
First up is a nifty site called www.gifts.com that not only gives you some unique, quirky or novel solutions to your gift-buying conundrums, but it also gives you
Manipulating customers has been an age-old trick, to create a furor about your goods or services. Undersupply to the market place (such is the way of the console and electronics industry in particular) has long been a clever trick to increase demand and value held for a product, on launch. By increasing frustration with fans, you increase desire for a product, hence increasing its value. iPhone’s still sell for around £1000 on eBay, when supply is still lower than demand. Naturally if these phones were available in the shops, this wouldnt be possible, but it is human nature to resort to extreme
We’ve all seen how our phones have slowly been included in most parts of our daily lives. First calls, then texts, then photographs, then music. Then emails, the internet, shopping, video calls and video recording. Not to mention satellite navigation and gps to help us get about with ease. Now our phones can play games that are as sophisticated as those on any console out there on the market. I for one regularly read the paper and magazines on my phone, and have seen plenty of people doing the same on their phones and pads, but this adds something new to the equation.
Seth Priebatsch has created a method which will allow our phone to make payments in stores. This isn’t a new thing, as McDonalds have had this payment ‘option’ advertised on their tills for nearly 2 years (although they still don’t use the system!). What is new is that Seth’s business SCVNGR, is interweaving the payment method with a reward based system to give the retailer a great way to gain information from the shopper, whilst incentivising the shopper to use the system with discounts.
All of these ideas have been done before. Discount schemes, information farming, loyalty schemes, even back to bluetooth discount systems in shopping precincts, but the magic is in Seth’s model. His aim is to reduce the fees linked with current credit and debit card payments. Currently retailers are charged between 2 and 20% to be able to take the payment using Mastercard / Electron etc. Seth believes, that by removing this payment and just charging a monthly fee it can reduce the charge burden on retailers, and also therefore knock-on the savings to the consumer buying the goods.
The value the SCVNGR information can give the retailer about their recent shopper’s habits, and the incentive the system gave for the recent visitor to return is clearly massive. Using normal loyalty schemes, the chance that the shopper will return to the store within 30 days is 1%. Typical returns within 30 days using Seth’s model on phones is as much as 40%. With such a valuable set of figures, retailers and businesses are flocking to his phone-based payment model. He has raised $20 million and is already employing 125 staff, up from 60 staff last month, and plans to take the business into the stratosphere.
The retailer doesnt get charged to receive payment through the phone, so maximises profits and revenue from sales, compared to losing as much as 20% using a standard debit or credit card. He also gains the information from the shopper about how often they’ve shopped there for example and what county they have travelled from to shop there. They then can offer discounts and vouchers to that person to encourage them to return, obviously through the phone itself, rather than clumsy reward cards, or vouchers in the post….and all for one simple payment a month to Seth’s SCVNGR business model.
Here is an interesting tweet from before SCVNGR was making the headlines. Something very similar to what they are doing now was required, it seems, and now here it is…!
http://redesignmobile.com/2011/02/14/maximizing-the-value-of-deals-on-facebook-and-foursquare/
On top of all of this, Seth has made the system almost game like. By purchasing items in one store, it offers and ‘unlocks’ offers elsewhere. By completing ‘challenges’ in certain places you get rewards of money off. Its a great idea, that distorts life a little and blurs the edge between reality and online activity, but one thing it does do is offer great ‘money off rewards’ that remain on your phone and that directly relate to your existing patterns of shopping. Sounds good to me!
10 years ago, if I lost my phone, I would have to retype the numbers into a new phone from memory. Now I dont even know any of my numbers. If my phone gets lost I’d lose everything from photos and conversations to numbers, and now it seems my payment method and discounts will disappear. But then on reflection, I’ve never lost a phone, and have lost half a dozen cards over the years.
Life is getting designed to be easier than ever before. Speed, convenience, effortless interaction. We’ve said it for years, but this evolution of payment and loyalty through a system as entwined in our life already as a phone is intriguing. Watch this space…!
You’ve all heard the phrase “if at first you don’t succeed try and try again”. Never is it more important than when business ideas are concerned. Richard Branson has failed with dozens of business ideas, before and since Virgin was created, and he’s not the only one.
Failure is intrinsic to knowing what works, knowing what doesn’t and learning as you go. Often businesses and ideas that work straight away fail in the long run. Failing soon and often, but measurably is critical to any process. Steve Jobs wrote back in 1983 “when you start looking at a problem, and it seems really simple, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem……the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem – and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.”
Making mistakes is part of learning and developing a business and a product. Apple’s 1993 Newton, which failed monumentally, helped lead the way for the Apple iPhone after all.
Where products are created, the whole critical path to success relies on failure, but structuring it in a commercially viable way to ensure that the ‘fail’ occurs as cheaply as possible, with minimal damage is the key. Working out what can and can’t succeed through trial and error generates a myriad of opportunities:
1. Patent Search
Sometimes an inventor or business come to us with an idea that seems brilliant. A truly unique concept that we can immediately see a market for. The first test is whether this is original, so we carry out a patent search. Sadly a lot of ideas have conflicts with existing patents whether it is the entire product or a mechanical element, but it’s much cheaper to find this out now, and can help the product evolve into something altogether more successful for the future. Naturally because it helps the product avoid future conflicts and challenges from other businesses and entrepreneurs, it makes the idea stronger and more bullet proof in the market. This makes it more attractive to investors, retailers, and easier to market.
“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper it’s really how it works…..to design something really well you have to get it! it takes passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that!” Steve Jobs.
2. Concepts
Even after an initial meeting, still some clients find the idea of a ‘conceptual’ stage frustrating. A single solution to a problem is so rare, and it’s vulnerability is so huge, that we cannot think of a time when a single solution at this initial stage would ever suffice. Whilst sometimes a designer might have a single answer in his head, the idea of developing a new product revolves around the growth of that idea. Evolving and developing an initial solution can create entirely different ideas in itself.
Using a designer helps the client explore untapped areas, and investigate other, more useful opportunities and answers to the original brief. Similarly, presenting concepts to a client will often help them discover things they had never thought of, beyond their original idea, and it can also clarify things they don’t want. This can be a positive experience. Simply using an engineer to recreate what is in your head limits your idea and it’s potential for success.
3. CAD/Solidworks
Using up-to-the-minute software we can make product ideas come to life. With 3D drawing and rendering packages the client’s idea leaps from the screen. Photo-realistic software can suddenly make their sketch and the agreed concept finally look like it could be a reality. What it also shows though is where the product could fall short: a weak joint, a possible flaw in the build for example, or even something simple, aesthetically, that the client dislikes. Making the product as realistic as possible enables us to visualise every facet, and between us, the client and the manufacturer, we can start to ensure that any failings or short-comings are stopped right there!
4. Prototyping
A 3D version of a product that has so far only been represented on a screen or piece of paper, is priceless. Generally we would hope that by this point we have created something quite complete, and close to “manufacturability”, but either way, discovering the problems with a product before it hits the production line, through prototyping is paramount. The cost of prototyping has come down in recent years, and even trialling something as simple as handle shapes, can really make the difference between a product that fits perfectly for the user, and one that immediately makes the product a turn-off for them. No matter what the product, a prototype is critical to ensure that every fail gets you one step closer to the successful solution.
We’ve always been fans of usability testing, and now at last our colleagues in other professions and most importantly our customers are starting to see the importance of it.
Using fully worked up prototypes or even just basic make-shift creations to represent the idea, it is brilliant to see a product idea in a real-life scenario. How it is picked up, held, and used can often surprise the designers and creators of the product, and steer the project in new directions.
When you live with an idea for as long as most inventors do, and when you submerse yourself into an idea as often as designers do, stepping outside that bubble and viewing the product as an outsider is critical but sometimes difficult. Watching the product in use can open up a whole new world of faults, failings and problems. Watching the product in its intended environment, with its intended age demographic is a perfect opportunity to ensure that when it reaches the shelves after manufacture, it will be successful and sell. Failing at this point, whilst potentially costly, only helps to mould the product to become something stronger and more likely for success when it hits the shelves.
“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” is the famous quote we all hear when life takes a turn for the worse. The same is definitely true for product development and design. Obviously the further you travel down the development path, the costlier any failures will be to rectify, but any failure detected BEFORE manufacture is a success, ensuring that the final product has the best chance of hitting those top-level sales as soon as possible.
The route to success needn’t be completely fraught with failure though, and we can help you get there smoothly, and with as little stress as possible. Why not get in touch, and we’ll guide you through the pitfalls and traps to a successful product.
When crisis strikes, there are always knee-jerk reactions in any scenario. It’s human nature. When something happens we aren’t expecting, our immediate thought is to suddenly do something – anything.
Here at Realise Design, we are staunch believers in analysing a situation, stepping back and taking a moment to think about how to improve, protect or rectify, rather than react. Where business is concerned, we believe that investing design into a business and its products can help them survive any storm. By adding value to our country’s products and brands through design we can ensure the long term survival of our economy and strengthen it against our global competitors. Over the last few decades we have lost some of our strongest brands and British businesses. We need to get that passion, product and brand strength back.
It seems that the government and in particular, Boris Johnson has a more extreme idea in mind on how to strengthen our economy for the future. Build a new airport….
Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted have been bursting at the seams for years, and with more and more obstruction to their growth and the road and rail networks that connect them, this latest idea seems to be gathering momentum.
Naturally the environmentalists are very upset, as the plan is to build a brand new airport on the Thames estuary, one of the London area’s most densely populated habitats for wildlife, but when you are dealing with spare land around a city such as London, or indeed anywhere in the UK, there will always be a deluge of wildlife residing on the few areas of our fair isle that aren’t developed.
But Boris believes that our struggling economy is heavily down to the fact that our famous ‘hub’ and ‘gateway’ to the western world (our connecting airports and transport systems) has broken down, and that we crucially need another airport. Surely per capita, the UK must have more air travel and runways than any other country in the world, and for such a small island we certainly do welcome a lot of flights, but maybe Boris is right?
The Mayor has previously said a new airport in the Thames would be “the most powerful single statement we could make about the ambition of this country”, and indeed, spending the £50 billion required to create the largest airport in the world would certainly give a much needed injection into our economy, even before the airport was active!
It certainly seems like something the country is under pressure to provide, with Government growth forecasts showing that Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted will reach capacity within 20 years, leaving regional airports having to cope with the overspill, but is that really a problem? Regional airports often find themselves with quiet points in their scheduling, particularly out of holiday season, and busier regional airports would give their local transport, hotel and conference facilities an injection of growth if international travellers were forced to consider flying in to Southampton or Midlands airport. It isn’t a problem when you consider that at worst the commuters will be 2 hours from London, and only just over an hour by train. Flying into JFK when you have a meeting in New York can sometimes take nearly 2 hours by road, from experience, and that’s their local airport!
Having the ‘largest airport in the world’ would naturally give us kudos. It would put the UK back on the map, in many ways. The worry is that in time another country would take this mantel away from us, and once again we’d end up at maximum capacity and we’d need to build an even bigger airport, or add even more runways. If having the biggest airport makes us think we are demonstrating our commitment to the future of business in the UK, then maybe we arent looking far enough into the future!
£50 billion invested into our businesses, our international relations, and our image as a trading nation would strengthen our footing in a much healthier, more deep-routed way. It would ensure that no matter what our plans for the future, we would know that our businesses had the foundations to succeed. Imagine what even a fraction of £50 billion would do if it was put towards supporting new business ventures, new inventions, technological developments, even research. Investing in the ‘brand’ that is the ‘UK’ rather than the mechanics of our country would surely be a more worthwhile solution.
Yes, our transport system needs to receive continual investment and support, but building a huge airport feels simply like ‘more of the same’. When the financial systems struggled, we gave them money to bail them out, when we start losing wars, we send in more troops, when the M25 remained congested for years, they gave it two more lanes. The financial system is worse than ever, we’re all still at war, and the M25 remains congested. ‘More of the same’ rarely solves the problem.
We need to step outside the box, and look at it from another perspective, to find a more useful solution. For example, the amount of money spent on bailing out the banks could have paid off more than a quarter of all the mortgages in the UK, for example (but that’s for another time…). A knee-jerk reaction of panic is rarely the best way.
Investing in our businesses, our products and our country’s image is a sure-fire way to strengthen us now, and for the future. We believe in strengthening the brand of Britain, and those brands within it. We believe that acting now to invest into our businesses and their ideas will create a future for our economy. We can help those businesses, and we can help your business create great products, great brands and great plans for the future, now.
Given the inexorable rise in the number of vehicles on our roads, you might think it’s inevitable that this will end in a total log jam. But whilst transport technology has caused this problem, it may yet come to the rescue. The rate of development in control systems and electronic features seems, if anything, to be accelerating. In just the last 10 years the following features have become standard on even the lowest priced cars:
Power steering; ABS; parking sensors; automatic windscreen wiper and light sensors; cruise control; run flat tyres; steering wheel controls; automatic parking; intelligent speed adaption; bluetooth connectivity; keyless ignition and entry and much more.
Check out the features on a standard Ford Fiesta, and you can see that one of the most popular entry level vehicle on our roads ever has most of the above list included, or available as options.
With everyone becoming blasé about cars that can park themselves, a car that can drive itself isn’t
Hi there lovely clients… OK, I am going to take a bit of a risk here and show you a video which I think you might not like, but which you should see.
We all like getting a bargain. Driving a bargain makes us feel in control of our lives. Being able to bask in your own great tough beat style negotiating skills is really really clever right? Or is it?
What are you really trying to achieve long term? Do you really want to save a few pounds now and annoy your designer? Or would you rather be foresighted enough to build a trusting creative relationship – making your designer want to put their soul on the line for you, burn the midnight oil and deliver a crash hot profitable work that makes you long term wealth?
Well watch this, and get an insight what it’s like for us when more short-sighted clients (not like you of course) get confused about why we create good work for them… Enjoy 
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