Thursday 26 November 2015

Fastest Growing Product Designers in Sheffield

When it comes to bringing an innovative product to the market, you need to approach the experts in the field of product design. You might think that you do not need a product designer (since they do charge quite a bit for their efforts) but you would be in a fix if you go ahead on your own. For one, tweaking an existing product ‘just a bit’ and making it look hot will not get you enough customers in the long run. Secondly, you might have experience in replicating products on a large scale but that does not mean you can build a different kind of product which will be both useful and appealing to the well-informed customers of today.

Product designers to the rescue:

What a product designer does is that he creates a great concept for a product that is either not available in the market or has not been fully exploited by manufacturers already. It can be anything from simple mobile-covers to complicated gadgets. Anything that has scope for improvement and innovation is worked upon by these talented designers to create a better product. What makes them more in-demand is that they build the designs in such a way that they can be easily manufactured on a large-scale once they are tested and approved by their clients.
Sheffield boasts of some of the fastest growing product designer consultancies in the UK. These firms have built quite a reputation for themselves in the area of innovative industrial and product conceptualisation. They hire only the best brains to work as product designers, which gives them an extra edge over their contemporaries elsewhere. Some of the services provided by them include:

•    3D CAD engineering
•    Design for manufacturing
•    Market research
•    Prototyping
•    Ergonomic designing

The designs that come out of these design consultancies are a class apart and include technologically advanced concepts that are currently not available in the market. Not only are their products user-friendly and economical, but the prototypes created by them are also checked for defects down to the last detail. Clients have only good things to say about these design houses and with the wide range of technologies being developed by them, they are all set for a bright future ahead.

Thursday 29 October 2015

How Can Designing a Prototype First Help Your Business

Industrial design engineering comprises of various steps that help a company move from product concepts to operational working models. The overall process can be divided into five primary components with each having its own sub-functions, viz. product design, prototyping, CAD engineering, user feedback and manufacturing.

All designers use various inputs from future industry trends, market requirements, end-use customer preferences, etc. to chart out a design methodology which is then used to build the design and create the prototype. Another stage involves modelling the design into technical drawings that help to define the product further. The later stages involve mould manufacture and eliciting customer feedback. Industrial designers extensively test and quality-check the design for expected and unforeseen issues throughout the process.

One essential component of this process is prototyping which helps define the product and analyse the various features including looks, form-factor, usage comfort, etc. Prototyping starts with the creation of a scale model of the final product using 3D printing and the technical specifications mapped out during the modelling process. There are various forms of prototyping that includes:

•    Form or Design Prototype: Provides an idea of how the final product will look like. Identifies issues that need to be corrected and refined in the form design

•    Systems Prototype: Involves looking at the circuitry to understand if the product will work or needs some changes. The systems prototype is sometimes handled by a different team that focuses on the circuit and assembly design

•    Experimental or Working Prototype: Allows designers to identify issues in the working of the product and define ways to take care them in the revised design. It generally involves integrating the form and the systems into one unit for undertaking detailed checks

•    Alpha and Beta Prototypes: These are different stages in the product development lifecycle and help further define the workings to identify and remove problems

•    Pre-Production Prototype: This is generally the final prototype and defines how the final product will look like. These prototypes are manufactured for extensive testing before the final production begins

Industrial Design Prototype Benefits
•    Provides an initial view of the final products
•    Helps identify problems and allows designers to remove them
•    Reduces the product development time as all problems, etc. can be mapped
•    Receives customer feedback that helps in building an acceptable product