Introduction to Product Design and Development - YouTube

Welcome! Our first discussion I'm going to give you a little bit of an

introduction about the design and development process, because it's kind of

important to understand what we're talking about and what are the boundaries

of what we're talking about. Let's go ahead and start to look at the phase

from research to development. That's really what we're talking about here.

Most people when they think of research and development, they kind of missed an

integral piece. Instead of just saying that we can have, what

we call RTD, or we have basic research which stands for R, this is the whole

discovery process. The time limits are kind of fuzzy because you're really

trying to do some exploration as to what's going on. You're not quite sure

what the return is on early research. This is really a long-term phase, long

term thinking of what we're going to develop in the technology space. Now when

we're talking about product development in companies, it's a little bit shorter term

then it is, say in the academic environment, because you're really trying

to target something that's going to have an effect in a space. What we mean by

that? A market, or an industry, or a wicked problem that we're trying to

solve. We're really trying to get into that specific area where we have some

needs or some areas where we're identifying those needs and research can

be anything from the technical research but it can also be the market research

things like that the other aspect when we move on from there is how do we then

transition from that basic research to product development well usually if

we're talking about in the technology world which we are there's some

innovations and technology that have to be done it's not that you just go from

hey we have this great idea we did some experiments and suddenly we've got a

product no there's usually a development process between those two things and

this is where the technology development dives in it's not quite as structured as

as it is in in final product it is a little bit difficult to plan but not

impossible to plan so usually you're looking at identifying what are the

technologies that we need so that we can have the product that's going to fulfill

the requirements by the customer so those are the things we're looking at

it's not as predictable again as as already established markets with

established products and just iterating a product and so it's kind of a medium

term arena that we play finally what we're all trying to

get to is a technology or service that is a product that somebody can use and

this is the development stage because now we're taking it out of the prototype

world and we're taking it into the practical world so we got to think of

things like manufacturing we got to think of things like supply chains we

got to think of how we're going to deliver how we're going to service all

those types of aspects on that end so there's very structured methods on doing

that some plan timing with a predictable outcome and goal now predictable

relative to the market what we think is going to happen so it's much shorter

term process and that's what you usually see with a lot of companies in this

process we have to think about okay how does innovation happen within say a

corporate structure or even a start-up structure and really it comes down to

something I like to call the innovation village now when you look at this if you

notice there's something like a team lead now that could be a CEO if we're

talking about something that's a very small company a start-up if you will

and they may have different types of groups around them so typically there's

some type of marketing professional there's an industrial designer that

isn't necessarily part of the core team they do show at the core team here

sometimes that's something where they get a consultant for those types of

things same with mechanical engineers

Electronics Engineers if they're part of the core team then they here they call

them designers which they are but usually you just call them engineers and

that's for an electromechanical system usually some type of physical widget

purchasing specialist that's not quite the best term for it that's the term

they're using in the book but somebody who can handle kind of accounting is

probably a better way to look at that and again that could be somebody

in-house or something that you specialize out and then of course we

come full circle back to manufacturing now if you're looking this what do you

suppose is really missing that would bring this diagram more into the 21st

century because when you're kind of going through this concept you see

mechanical designer electronics designer industrial designer

they're really kind of missing a key element that is part of many many

technology companies and today what's really missing is the software piece

which is usually integral to having the mechanical and the electronic systems

working together because oftentimes you've got to have the hardware talking

with the software and everything to work in unison so software is really what's

missing out of this and typically in any type of company you want to have a

software lead that will also have a whole bunch of software developers

underneath that that realm so without going too much further into it this is

in general what you're going to see in most technology companies which again we

call innovation village now the other thing that you're looking at is the

different factors of how does your product and/or service or whatever it is

that you're designing fit within dimensions of competition so you're

constantly balancing things right you're you're balancing what's our

manufacturing costs what's our quality and and how can we leverage you know

lower cost but still maintain high quality and you have to be very careful

about that because if you drive down cost too much quality oftentimes is

sacrificed so be cognizant of that because if what you're touting in the

marketplace is that your quality is going to be better than your competitor

you don't want to be cutting cost to the point where it's really not that that

can really bite you in the butt on the flip side we also have product

development and in this case this is where we've done lots of research on

what the customer needs are and converting those customer needs in to

what our features and functions and really how the product has to operate or

work what are the necessary items what are the nice-to-haves that's good to

know but what are the gada house the things that the customers absolutely

need to be able to sell this product and use this product so competitive his

competitiveness is very important based upon these things so it kind of brings

up an idea though there's some people that say well you got to pay attention

to your competitors that's true but more often than not but

if you look at a lot of the entrepreneurs of today they say you know

don't focus on your competitors the problem is because then you stare at

your competitors and look at what they're doing that becomes a real issue

because if that's all you're doing you're not paying attention to creating

value and really we want to create value and how do we do that it's through the

product development and it's about the product or service experience so I want

you to think for an example what is a product or service that you've

encountered where you had an absolute horrible experience maybe the product

was poor what happened in that experience did it not work did it fall

apart did it just not have a good look or feel everybody can kind of think of

something where they've had a product that they thought was going to be great

but they just had a really poor experience with that product so that's

one side of the coin I always think about your product from your customer's

point of view and we're going to talk a lot more about that as we move forward

but that gives you a sense of it's not just does the product do the function a

lot of Engineers get hung up on does it just do the function that becomes a

problem because you're really missing the whole other side of the about of how

do people experience your product how does it make them feel and and

oftentimes that's not something in engineers like to think about but it's

actually very salient to the conversation and if you go back to

thinking about a product that you really had a rough time with would you ever go

purchase one again that's kind of your telltale sign if you would never

purchase that same product cuz you had a horrible experience with it that's not

good for the company it's not going to last

so versus now think of a product or service where you had a fantastic

experience where it was great you just loved using the product what did they

get right in that product or service that made it feel that way or was it

their service that made you feel like you know what they're really taking care

of me even when things don't go perfect they I feel like the company really has

their customers best interest in mind so those are things you want to think about

in creating the whole value not just in the design of the product or service

but everything that surrounds it okay and there's other classes where we dive

into more about that whole surrounding piece let's look at some examples now so

for example most people can see this I probably didn't even have to put the

name Apple on top for you to know that this is the company Apple so looking at

these products now we've got several different products right so we've got

their laptop on top we have an iPad and iPod or iPhone these days and if you

just have the look and feel you can almost aesthetically tell that it's an

Apple product even without having to read it so that's serious industrial

design work and serious branding they have spent decades building that image

into something that is identifiable without you having to even know what the

name is so these int these intangible elements drive a lot of the success of

Apple products very few products do you see other people who lined up around the

bend to get the new version of something so that's something that is kind of a

unique thing that you see with Apple it'll be interesting to see in the

future if they can if they can maintain that so other types of products that

have a certain look and feel black and decker

now this is completely technology and the other landscape of hardware but

black & decker if you look at their logo and look at the colors they use they

actually have threaded they're color schemes throughout their product lines

so if you look at it here we've got this orange and black theme that goes across

almost all of their products so it's something that's very familiar and it

creates the signature look of these types of products the other thing for

products like this is there's probably much more of a functional expectation

they've kind of built their brand on these products are Hardy you can drop

them they'll keep working you can use them in in difficult situations and

they're easy to use so there's a lot of things they built in here that are very

different than from some from say the Apple products where we're really

looking for rugged system and then we have other

types of things so it's not just about ruggedness it may be about

innovativeness so this is called the Good Grips angled measuring cup and as

you can see it's a measuring cup that you can look at from the side so you

don't have to how many of you've ever had to hold up a measuring cup and

you're like trying to line yourself right with the line to see if you're

actually there now us as engineers we like to do that sort of thing

my wife just laughs at me when I sit there and I try to line something up

she's like you don't need to know it that well but hence that's the problem

if you have all of your all of your scale on the side we're here if you

notice they have this horseshoe type innovation where you can actually see it

from the top so you don't have to do your guesswork from the side so it

actually was driven by customer feedback so this is where the customer redefined

the design and they made something more elegant and and different so it embodied

a differentiation in this product that you don't see another things and people

might be willing to pay more for this than a standard measuring cup so let's

take a different example here's something that's functionally different

now at first blush this target prescription pill bottle seems kind of

odd so what are some of the first things you notice about it well maybe one of

the first things you might notice is it looks like it's upside down and you'd be

right but from the feedback they got from a lot of customers particularly

older patients this was actually preferable the other thing is they made

the lid much wider with the ability to be able to open it much easier because

particular when you're talking about people with some extreme arthritis that

can be a problem the other thing is they wanted to make a surface so that you

could easily read the pill bottles so the problem with some of the small ones

is people can't read them and they can't figure out what the dosage are often

they have to take it so they tried to change that and make it readily visible

as to what the medicine is so you know what you're taking and then how often

you take it the other thing they did if you notice you can see the little

patient info card you can actually pull that out so you can read the rest of the

information that you need to know in much larger font

and how it is on a normal like pill bottle so there's a lot of innovations

in this design and of course target did put a little branding on here by having

kind of the red container and those types of things so there's a lot of

thought that went into the redesign of this prescription bottle now how does

that different or how does that functional difference look from a design

like this in this case if you look at this called the botom Pavini glass and

most of us probably don't even have one what does this tell you what do you kind

of get from this type of a design so it's very different if you notice we're

not going for massive function improvement or anything like this this

is called design of elegance and design of aesthetic and this is much more an

industrial design component and this you're looking for simplicity and

elegance and just something that is almost like a work of art to look at and

that's kind of what they're going for here so it's kind of a unique look and

feel and it distinguishes their glasses from all the other glasses out there so

in this case people might be willing to pay a little more for this unique

looking glass and unique style of glass and finally we get things like function

and again this is going back the other way

here what's the value proposition why would I buy a robot to vacuum my carpet

well if you're the person who normally has to clean your floors and clean the

carpets maybe you're really sick of doing that and you have to do it often

or you have pets and it's like a daily routine they have to sweep up things so

this actually can do that for you so the value proposition is that doing some

work for you that otherwise you would have to do and saving you time so the

value here is the time saved by you not having to do that and so this is a

technology company again so it's a way they were able to take something in

robotics and apply it to everyday use and this isn't the only one this is just

really one of the first ones from iRobot that really came about

okay so really what we're looking at is a whole bunch of different topics now

the textbook that we're using has massive amount of topics way more topics

that we can go through so what we're really going to focus on is the ones

that are in yellow as we move through we have other courses that cover some of

these other aspects but for this course this is really what we're going to focus

on in TM 250 so with that we will explore the next chapter in the next

video thank you for watching take care