Product Design

Having A Product Designed

You need to select a good designer when starting a new product design.  Complex projects will need everything from electronic design, technical consulting, Printed Circuit Board (PCB) layout, design of an enclosure (metal, plastic, etc), a prototype to be manufactured, programming of embedded devices such as micro-controllers and finally technical authoring.

To get a product design started the specification needs to be defined.  A good product design company will aid with this or if necessary provide technical consulting to carry out initial research and development of any specific technology areas.

Sensible planning is essential for a well designed and manufactured product.  Electronic circuits will often be tested and refined using prototyping techniques before the final design is then created.  Throughout the development testing and evaluation of the design needs to be carried out to make sure that it will perform as specified.

A specification should also define environmental operating conditions such as operating temperature range, storage temperature range and IP rating.

When designing a new electronic product the ergonomics and aesthetics can also be important considerations.  A product may be superb technically but if it doesn’t look the part will it be marketable and attractive to potential customers.

An product design these days is almost aways going to have a computer device of some type inside to control it of the product is electronic.  This can range from a simple 8 bit micro-controller to a very powerful 16 or 32bit processor and this will need to be programmed by an embedded programmer.  Often the C language will be used for this due to its “programming to the metal” power.

After a product design the onward manufacture is usually not carried out by the same company that will provide production manufacture.  Manufacturers are great at manufacturing, often for very low cost and design companies are great at designing.  Therefore the product design company needs to ensure that the manufacture process is fully documented so that any manufacturer can take on the build and have all of the information they require, including test procedures.  At the end of a project a design company should ensure that this information is compiled and provided for manufacturer quoting and subsequent production.

IBEX provides electronic product design, embedded software development, PC software development, technology consultancy in South East England on the Surrey / Kent border, 30 minutes from Central London.