Most often product design is not an obvious task. The stakeholders involved all demand something different from the product designer and from the actual design process. All related to the proces of production and manufacturability, as well as the known ingredients of marketing and sales are dynamically involved from the beginning of the process ...
- The manufacturer is concerned with production cost; in the end, the manufacturer wants an economically produced product.
- The purchaser looks at price, appearance, and prestige value.
- The end user is concerned with usability, functionality and performance of the final product.
- The maintenance and repair department focuses on how well the final product can be maintained: is the product easily reassembled, disassembled, diagnosed, and serviced?
The product design process has experienced huge leaps in evolution over the last few years with the rise and adoption of 3D printing. New consumer-friendly 3D printers can produce dimensional objects and print upwards with a polymer like substance opposed to traditional printers that spread ink across a page.
Pragmatic
Especially for companies requiring a pragmatic, hands-on or budgetwise approach we support the GeoMagic workflow besides the known market leaders and high-end tools like Autodesk Inventor and PTC Creo, among others.
Process
The design process follows a guideline involving three main sections:
- Analysis
- Concept
- Synthesis
The latter two sections are often revisited, depending on how often the design needs touch-ups, to improve or to better fit the criteria. This is a continuous loop, where feedback is the main component. To break it down even more, the seven stages specify how the process works. Analysis consists of two stages, concept is only one stage, and synthesis encompasses the other four.
Analysis
- Accept Situation: Here, the designers decide on committing to the project and finding a solution to the problem. They pool their resources into figuring out how to solve the task most efficiently.
- Analyze: In this stage, everyone in the team begins research. They gather general and specific materials which will help to figure out how their problem might be solved. This can range from statistics, questionnaires, and articles, among many other sources.
Concept
Define: This is where the key issue of the matter is defined. The conditions of the problem become objectives, and restraints on the situation become the parameters within which the new design must be constructed.
Synthesis
- Ideate: The designers here brainstorm different ideas, solutions for their design problem. The ideal brainstorming session does not involve any bias or judgment, but instead builds on original ideas.
- Select: By now, the designers have narrowed down their ideas to a select few, which can be guaranteed successes and from there they can outline their plan to make the product. Implement: This is where the prototypes are built, the plan outlined in the previous step is realized and the product starts to become an actual object.
- Evaluate: In the last stage, the product is tested, and from there, improvements are made. Although this is the last stage, it does not mean that the process is over. The finished prototype may not work as well as expected and new ideas need to be generated promptly.
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