You have made the mental leap and know which of your invention ideas is worth pursuing. Now you are ready to get started for real. Today I’ll describe the process of getting a project off the ground and into the stratosphere. Well, at least the first steps anyway!

Unless you are an experienced product design engineer, you will need to hire the best one you can find. I’m not talking about product development companies you see on late night TV ads. If you’ve been reading my blog, you know what I mean and why you should stay away from these scam artists. Enough said.

Since we are a new product design firm, I’ll let you know a little about the process we go through when a new client joins us. This insight will help you better understand the process and be better prepared. The first thing we do is evaluate whether the idea defies the laws of physics. This sounds silly but you would be surprised just how many inventors have such far out ideas that Sir Isaac Newton himself would be humored. Since our office is located in Boulder, Colorado, we get lots of these far out ideas come our way. Must be due to something they sell here.

Assuming we get past this first step, the next thing we look at is whether the product design is more driven by design and style or more driven by the function. Our approach to the design depends on this and the market the product is intended for. We will try to get inside your head and explore around a bit. More than likely you have supplied us with some sketches or a written description which is all too clear inside your brain. It is also likely our brains aren’t seeing the same thing yours is.

For form driven product ideas we first introduce you to our industrial design team. The ID’s will create some simple sketches based on what they think you are trying to invent. We send you these images to get your opinion. Sometimes we nail it, other times we are way off. The goal here is to get down on some professional sketches what you have created in your mind. Until we can capture in our sketches what is really going on inside your mind, we keep sketching and getting your feedback.

Once the sketches are representative, or for function only driven products, the next step is the real engineering effort. This is where your product really begins to take shape. This is also the most time consuming part of any new product development. For products driven by function, we are able to go right to this step and dig into it. On the other hand, products driven by form our ID team will first mature the form before engineers get a hold of it. This way the engineers know what the end product should look like and don’t spend so much time working on the concepts.

For form driven projects it is more cost effective to first engage our ID’s to add the desired style, and for function driven projects it’s more cost effective to skip the ID’s and go right to the engineers. Before beginning we want to learn as much about your project and how you envision it as a finished product on the market. This will help us guide you through the most effective path to get you to the stratosphere.