Choosing the right product designer can make all the difference to whether your idea becomes a successful product or not. Here is some great advice on the skills and attitudes to look for in your product designer.
1. Make sure that your chosen product designer will design with you and not just for you, particularly if you are keen to have input into the overall design of your product.
2. Check that what you are paying for is more than a pretty picture. It is essential that your product is possible to manufacture commercially and so make sure that materials, manufacturing and mass production will all be considered in the design process. (You don’t necessary need all the fine detail at this stage but equally you don’t want to present your idea only to have someone say “You can’t make that.”)
3. Always insist on meeting your designer in person – not just a sales person, the actual designer.
4. Always ask what experience the designer has and confirm they will be working on your project personally. Check that they have design for manufacture experience and quiz them on what materials they suggest for your product and how they think it will be made.
5. Check that you get on with your designer and that they fully understand your idea. You will be working with them for the while so both these elements are key to a successful outcome.
6. If protecting your idea is crucial to its success, then make sure you commission a product designer who understands Intellectual Property protection or works alongside someone who does.
7. Always insist on seeing and reading the companies Terms and Conditions – check these to ensure that all the IP around the project belongs to you and not the product designer.
8. Ask to see some previous work.
9. Ask for three recent references and then ask these references detailed questions about how they found the process and whether they would use them again.
10. If you need to prototype your idea then make sure your designer has experience and knowledge of prototyping techniques.
11. If you are an individual looking to take a product a market, choose a designer who understands this and can support you in more than just the CAD (Computer Aided Design) stage.
12. Make sure you use a designer who is using industry standard CAD software to build your idea and that they will release the CAD files to you at the end of the project without further charge. These files can be used for prototyping and potentially manufacture. IGES or STEP format are most universally accepted.
In conclusion, developing a new idea with a professional product designer can often be the most exciting part of the idea to market process. However the relationship between you and the designer is an important one and some initial due diligence checks, such as those mentioned above, can help ensure you choose the right product designer to help turn your idea into a viable product.
Phil Staunton is Managing Director of D2M Innovation Ltd. D2M has a proven track record of helping entrepeneurs protect, design, develop, prototype, manufacture and sell their ideas.
Phil is a qualified industrial designer who has worked on over 500 projects from rough sketch to product launch.
Check out the D2M website for further information on product design and prototyping for entrepreneurs.