Product Startup Podcast Episode 172: Early Concept Design for Inventions

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn about the processes and best practices and conceptual product design from a product designer

00:00:06 Kevin Mako: that has worked with over 100 hardware startups.

00:00:08 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:16 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for physical product startups,

00:00:21 Narrator: sponsored by PTC's two best in class 3D CAD product development software solutions Onshape and Creo.

00:00:26 Narrator: And produced by Mako Design + Invent, the original firm providing world-class consumer product

00:00:30 Narrator: development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:00:35 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Rob Colgan to the show.

00:00:39 Kevin Mako: Rob has worked for Mako Design for almost 10 years, working with well over 100 physical product startups and developing an invention idea into a real consumer product for them.

00:00:47 Kevin Mako: He went to school for both mechanical design and industrial design, along with building many custom cars and motorcycles as a hobby.

00:00:53 Kevin Mako: Today, Rob was going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventor startups and small manufacturers can understand the key initial steps of developing

00:00:59 Kevin Mako: a new invention idea, the product guidelines that started all off right through to the concept

00:01:03 Kevin Mako: sketches, computer-aided design work, and visual renderings that make a great product. Now, on for the episode. Hey, Rob, welcome to the show. Hey, Kevin, thanks for having me.

00:01:12 Kevin Mako: Happy to have you on. Rob's been in the product design world for a long time. He's been with the macro design team for almost 10 years now.

00:01:20 Kevin Mako: And you've worked on hundreds of projects for primarily startups, but also some medium and large corporations as well.

00:01:26 Kevin Mako: But today, I really want to drill down onto the ideation, the concept design, and some best practices in and around developing a new physical consumer

00:01:35 Kevin Mako: product invention, something that you've had, obviously, a lot of experience. Rob, you're a phenomenal designer, obviously, and testament to work, as many, obviously, the portfolio

00:01:44 Kevin Mako: pieces on the site and whatnot. And that's what I want to drill down in today for somebody who's

00:01:47 Kevin Mako: starting in the process into design, whether they're working with a design team, whether they're

00:01:52 Kevin Mako: a designer themselves, whether they're just interested in what the process looks like. I want to just

00:01:57 Kevin Mako: chat to you about some of the things that we do in process on actually conceptualizing design,

00:02:02 Kevin Mako: putting the specifications down, getting into sketches and CAD and so on. But then some of your

00:02:06 Kevin Mako: best practices and your tips for really making a great product, not just in design, but a product

00:02:11 Kevin Mako: that's built to sell to be an actual commercial success for a hardware startup. Before we get into all

00:02:16 Kevin Mako: that, Rob, just give us a bit of a background where you went to school and some of the stuff

00:02:19 Rob Colgan: you've been working on and what you like to do. Yeah, sure. Early on, school-wise, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I love working with my hands.

00:02:26 Rob Colgan: I love to draw. So I thought, well, let's try mechanical engineering. Did that for a bit at George Brown. Just a lot of math and a lot

00:02:33 Rob Colgan: of physics. My dad put me on to industrial design and that ended up being a beautiful marriage of both engineering and art that led me to Humber and I was there for

00:02:42 Rob Colgan: a few years and then

00:02:43 Kevin Mako: started an internship program at Mako and I've been there ever since. Yeah, it's amazing that

00:02:48 Kevin Mako: the industrial design really was a fit for you, Rob, because one of the things that impressed me

00:02:52 Kevin Mako: so much about the early days, especially early applications, like you literally built motorcycles in your garage, take an old beater, redo it all up, come up with this like sexy

00:03:01 Kevin Mako: new design for it, worked on cars, all sorts of stuff. So you're able to kind of mend your skills of

00:03:07 Kevin Mako: visual essentially hand sketching design in combination with your understanding of like mechanics and

00:03:12 Kevin Mako: engineering fuse those together which really is industrial design right it's the combination of visual beauty and actual manufacturerability which is kind of the engineering

00:03:21 Rob Colgan: side underneath a lot of my hobbies revolve closely around being a product designer and developer it's you know looking at something

00:03:27 Rob Colgan: how do I make this better having that vision as to how to make it look better helps yeah definitely my Yeah, my hobbies are closely related to what I do for a living.

00:03:37 Rob Colgan: There's very good reason for that. I love the way design looks. I live and breed design. And I also love working with my hands.

00:03:43 Rob Colgan: I like to get the instant gratification of, you know, changing something, removing something on a motorcycle or car and seeing that improvement of that item being removed.

00:03:52 Rob Colgan: I love clean and simple design.

00:03:54 Kevin Mako: And I harp that religiously in my day-to-day life. Let's break it back to what we really start with.

00:03:59 Kevin Mako: So if we're looking at any new product, a new innovation, well, most people don't realize is there actually is a bit of planning that goes in behind it.

00:04:06 Kevin Mako: You don't just jump straight into the sketch or straight into the features. One of the things that is really key is what we call the PGD.

00:04:13 Kevin Mako: It's a product guidelines document, something that is tracked actually throughout the life of the project, all the way through to and including manufacturing.

00:04:21 Kevin Mako: But this really starts from day one, interacting with the client, interacting with the new innovation to really distill down what is the core innovation and what are the features.

00:04:30 Kevin Mako: So talk just a bit about the PGD, maybe some of the questions you're asking clients or some of the things that are being formed

00:04:36 Kevin Mako: onto that guideline document just to frame the text-based concept of what the product is.

00:04:41 Kevin Mako: And this could really work for anybody, whether they're at a new idea phase or even if they're

00:04:45 Kevin Mako: in design. Distilling it down to written word, looking at your features and prioritizing them is really

00:04:50 Kevin Mako: something you can do at any phase if you don't have it well structured or well-organized in the

00:04:55 Rob Colgan: development of your physical consumer product idea. Yeah, definitely itemizing is essentially a wish list. It's the best place to start. It's simple.

00:05:03 Rob Colgan: It doesn't require a lot of materials. You just write down exactly what you want to get out of your product is key.

00:05:09 Kevin Mako: You know, have your wants and your needs. Nice to have features. Well, that's really important. I like that you mention that it's kind of your must have and your want to have.

00:05:17 Kevin Mako: And this is a great exercise. Anybody can do this at any stage of development in the product. And it's something that actually very few hardware developers do.

00:05:24 Kevin Mako: When they're structuring, they plan, they think of all these things of the features that they want. But they don't look at it as like, what is absolutely critical.

00:05:30 Kevin Mako: We talk a lot about it on the show, the concept of MVP, where you need a really good quality product, but not with a ton of features.

00:05:38 Kevin Mako: As a hardware startup, especially, you can't afford to do a crazy amount of features because each feature is almost its own product design.

00:05:45 Kevin Mako: So talk a bit, Rob, about the must have versus might want to have features. And how might as well, it doesn't mean that you're throwing them away.

00:05:54 Rob Colgan: It's just things that aren't critical to your core innovation that you came up with as the inventor. Yeah, definitely.

00:06:00 Rob Colgan: It's important to focus on your core features, get those listed out. You know, they may only be one or two, but those are the two most important aspects of

00:06:09 Rob Colgan: your product. And that's where you should focus 99% of your energy. There are nice to have features, but a lot of the times those can be a crutch to helping

00:06:18 Rob Colgan: your product, such as LEDs or some sort of cool texture. Yeah, connected with an app.

00:06:23 Rob Colgan: Exactly. Yeah, we get caught up in all these extra little frills. Honestly, If you look at Apple products, for example, there's no frills. It's very simple.

00:06:33 Rob Colgan: You look at the phone itself or the device and it's very clean, very minimal. There's no extra bells and whistles. That's very important.

00:06:40 Rob Colgan: It's good to not get carried away with all the extra bells and whistles because it could lead you

00:06:44 Kevin Mako: down a path of unnecessary exhaustion. Yeah, we call it feature creep. Obviously, and feature creep can be very dangerous to a hardware startup because although

00:06:52 Kevin Mako: it might make sense in corporate development, and I teach us in the masters of engineering program now, it's important to look at all the features when you're a big Fortune

00:06:58 Kevin Mako: 500 company and you're trying to capture the entire market really with your next release or at least

00:07:02 Kevin Mako: most of it. But as a hardware startup, you can't afford the millions upon millions of dollars. It really takes to very carefully vet, explore, design engineer all

00:07:11 Kevin Mako: of the features that you want on your product in the beginning. And you can get there as a startup. And I'm all about conquering the space disrupt the industry.

00:07:19 Kevin Mako: But first and foremost, wedge yourself in there with the core innovation. I love how you mentioned Rob, the one or two core features because I look at a dozen new products a day.

00:07:29 Kevin Mako: And realistically speaking, almost every single one of them has almost often really only come up with one, maybe two actual like core innovations. That was the vision

00:07:38 Kevin Mako: of the innovator. That was the light bulb moment, the aha. It's that core concept that you really first came up with.

00:07:45 Kevin Mako: And what you can potentially see is a lot of these tack-ons, all kinds of extra bells and whistles that the innovator thinks is necessary to support the main feature. Maybe in the

00:07:54 Kevin Mako: long run and probably in the long run, but wouldn't you rather get to market, create a wedge

00:07:59 Kevin Mako: in the market, be exponentially more valuable of a hardware startup with your core innovation,

00:08:04 Kevin Mako: learn from your customers about what is truly valuable in terms of your add-ons or all these extra features, and then continue to grow the brand from there.

00:08:13 Kevin Mako: You also brought up the concept of Apple. And I do like talking about that, although it's cliche to bring up Apple, I know as much as

00:08:19 Kevin Mako: we all do. But the reality is, they led the forefront of design. So you really have to see what are they doing and how did they succeed?

00:08:25 Kevin Mako: How can you mimic that as a startup? And one of the things that you mentioned, Rob, is that they really focus on simplicity. If you look at the Apple products

00:08:33 Kevin Mako: that have been rolled out, even though they had the highest development budgets on Earth, they start with a core offering.

00:08:39 Kevin Mako: And then every year, they may slightly modify and tweak that offering largely by customer feedback and customer needs, as well as internal ideation and a whole

00:08:48 Kevin Mako: bunch of other stakeholder things.

00:08:51 Rob Colgan: But the reality is they're not coming out with everything from day one. Yeah, that's a great point, Kevin. It's very important to leave some meat on the bone for

00:08:58 Rob Colgan: future products improvements and releases, such as 2.0s, 3.0s. You definitely don't want to bite off too much that you can chew early on.

00:09:06 Rob Colgan: It's best to lower your upfront costs. You know, if you're starting out, you might not have all the resources, you know, as Apple. It's important to

00:09:14 Rob Colgan: focus solely on your core features, build those out, prototype the heck out of them. and ensure that the core functionality is 100% nailed

00:09:23 Rob Colgan: down before you go to market. If, you know, the reviews come in and people want to see LEDs and app integration, fantastic. There's your 2.0.

00:09:30 Kevin Mako: It's like playing pool. You want to set yourself up for future wins. Very powerful. So let's assume that we've built this product guideline document.

00:09:37 Kevin Mako: We've done a good job working on the must have features and the maybe

00:09:42 Rob Colgan: features or the potential future features. What's next? Yeah. So once you have your core features listed out and,

00:09:48 Rob Colgan: You have a main objective from here, research is your friend, Google's your friend, research as much as you can.

00:09:55 Rob Colgan: Once you have that core feature written out, time to sketch that feature out, how do you do this?

00:10:00 Rob Colgan: What's the most simple way to get that feature functioning and functioning well with as minimal components as possible?

00:10:06 Rob Colgan: Even if it's overcomplicated in the beginning, you can simplify that later on, but at least trying to visualize how that feature works is important.

00:10:16 Rob Colgan: So what I do is I just sketch everything out. I break it all down.

00:10:20 Kevin Mako: I'm a very visual person. It just helps to look at that system and see how it plays out. Yeah, that's good, Rob, because you're breaking it down into different components.

00:10:29 Kevin Mako: You've got the holistic product, which you're looking at kind of the user environment, relaying it back to the PGD.

00:10:35 Kevin Mako: And then also you're trying to figure out each of the components. So I like how you mentioned you're doing a bit of both.

00:10:40 Kevin Mako: You're looking at the overall project scope, but really breaking it down piece by piece to figure

00:10:45 Kevin Mako: okay, first and foremost, how does that individual component work? And then once you've got a pretty good idea around that, how does it all go together?

00:10:53 Kevin Mako: And you just do this primarily on

00:10:54 Rob Colgan: sketches. Talk a bit about the sketching that you do, because there's a variety of different types of sketching out there. What are some of them? What do you use them for?

00:11:00 Rob Colgan: Yeah, so there's a few different ways to go about sketching. Plastic pen and paperwork. That's what I usually do for myself

00:11:07 Rob Colgan: internally. I like to sketch everything out because I'm a visual person. I like to hand sketch, just quick little doodles, get it on a page, see what it looks like. You know,

00:11:15 Rob Colgan: you can draw on a tablet. You can block model CAD together or you can create rough CAD models just to get a better 3D sense.

00:11:23 Rob Colgan: The problem with sketching is that you lose that three-dimensional aspect. You know, we start drawing maybe a side view of the product or a front view. It's hard

00:11:31 Rob Colgan: to visualize that, just spinning it around. So sometimes I like to just jump into CAD and start blocking it in just so I can get a better sense of scale.

00:11:40 Kevin Mako: I can look at it quickly or from the front, back, top, et cetera. It's just a better visualizing the product. That's great because the

00:11:47 Kevin Mako: sketching part is not necessarily set in stone. A lot of new designers, especially in the early years, they say, well, what's the exact process?

00:11:54 Kevin Mako: Especially in these early sketching phases, this is really hardcore ideation. You're taking years of knowledge in your mind, visual design, industrial time,

00:12:03 Kevin Mako: mechanical engineering, electronic engineering elements, component engineering, manufacturing engineering,

00:12:07 Kevin Mako: All of the knowledge that you've gained over a long time, you're trying to distill that down into this new innovation.

00:12:13 Kevin Mako: So the point of sketching is don't get too bogged down about a specific sketching process. Like Rob mentioned, there's a whole bunch of different tools.

00:12:21 Kevin Mako: Each tool has pros and cons. Some are quick, some are short, some are 2D, some are 3D. There's a lot of different ways that you can look at sketching.

00:12:28 Kevin Mako: But the point here, especially as a designer, as you're working with your design team, is to allow the creative flexibility so that they can best get the idea.

00:12:37 Kevin Mako: ideas that are in their head on a component-by-component basis onto some form of visual. From there, you can, of course, modify, delete, change, and prove.

00:12:47 Kevin Mako: The idea here is just to get these things down on paper so you can start collaborating in a visual

00:12:52 Kevin Mako: environment as opposed to the text-based environment, which we talked about prior as the PGD.

00:12:57 Kevin Mako: Now, keep in mind that the product guidelines document your must-have features and you might want

00:13:02 Kevin Mako: to have features and all the elements of those features are going to evolve over time. As you're doing this research, as you're doing these hand sketchings, so is the PGD evolving.

00:13:11 Kevin Mako: And that's why it's really important for us here. We do it on a weekly basis live track.

00:13:16 Kevin Mako: So we can look at all the specifications that are occurring right from the beginning of the project

00:13:19 Kevin Mako: all the way to and including manufacturing, see where things are changed, where things are modified.

00:13:24 Kevin Mako: Most likely over time, you're adding more and more and more specifications to your guideline document in written form, which is following the visual form

00:13:33 Kevin Mako: and being essentially collaborative as a central communication source. So Rob, explain to some of the ideas about how you actually sketch.

00:13:41 Kevin Mako: I know you talk a lot to clients and you speak a lot about the concept of MVP, cleanliness, user interaction.

00:13:49 Kevin Mako: Just describe some of the things and why they're important

00:13:52 Rob Colgan: when you're doing your sketching, no matter which way you're actually sketching out or which tools you're using in sketch. Yeah, so it's best to treat a new product in

00:14:01 Rob Colgan: an inside out manner. So build it on the skeletal level, get those core features almost like propped up like a skeleton.

00:14:08 Rob Colgan: Once you can figure out that mechanism or how that system of components works, great. So once I have that skeletal structure figured out, I have the components that I'm happy with,

00:14:17 Rob Colgan: I can then start skinning the product and that's where the real fun starts. This is where a lot of ergonomics and user interaction comes into play.

00:14:25 Rob Colgan: And not only that, obviously it has to look great. That usually falls into place, you know, for a flawless function.

00:14:29 Rob Colgan: I find it's best to not stress the aesthetics so much, especially early on. I know that it's best to just do a quick sketch as to what you vision the product looking

00:14:38 Rob Colgan: like in the future. Don't let that twist your arm with the component selection because we can always find

00:14:45 Rob Colgan: components that are smaller and we can improve those to get them in a smaller overall package so that the external design looks as best as possible.

00:14:53 Rob Colgan: But don't let that bog you down. The aesthetics will come later. But yeah, once I get the skeletal structure sorted,

00:14:59 Rob Colgan: I can then look at ways to make the product either smaller to start, maybe some of the

00:15:05 Rob Colgan: requirements from the PGD were that the product has to be compact and might have to travel.

00:15:12 Rob Colgan: So things of that nature can really stress the component selection. Now it's a good time to start focusing on ergonomics, user experience, where do I put the

00:15:20 Kevin Mako: controls, where's the on button, where's the screen, is there a screen? It has all this weighs into how the product is going to be used by the customer.

00:15:27 Kevin Mako: Yeah, and customer here, we're really talking about the end user, right? That's what's important to think about as well as an inventor because as an inventor,

00:15:34 Kevin Mako: you've been thinking about this product probably for a long time. You're now in the weeds. You're working with your designers.

00:15:39 Kevin Mako: You're figuring in all the different pieces, but you are not the customer. The customer is the person at the end of the day, even if it's something that is for you,

00:15:46 Kevin Mako: which a lot of innovations are, is something that you want for your own life. Remember the customer. Put yourself in the shoe of that avatar, they call it.

00:15:53 Kevin Mako: Who is your ideal customer? Your starting customer, again, you're not trying to be. everything to everybody, as we talked about earlier.

00:15:59 Kevin Mako: So putting yourself in the mind of the initial customers and how your product is going to work to them. Rob, I really like how you mentioned in

00:16:07 Kevin Mako: their essentially simplicity in terms of the design, but starting with the components, bringing it all together, then starting to work on your actual aesthetics and usability.

00:16:15 Kevin Mako: The core components to a product are usually the toughest. Now, this isn't written in stone. Some products are the exceptions.

00:16:21 Kevin Mako: some products, the visual is the main feature of the product. But for most innovations or inventions that are out there, especially for mass manufactured

00:16:29 Kevin Mako: physical consumer products, it usually comes down to some fairly specific engineering. So that's why it's a really good idea not to get too beat up about things like you mentioned,

00:16:39 Kevin Mako: Rob, like maybe it's too big to start or maybe the visualization isn't as good as it might be or maybe things need to be changed.

00:16:45 Kevin Mako: Well, yes, you can work on that as the product evolves. But most important, just like we did earlier in the must have might want to have features,

00:16:51 Kevin Mako: we have to look at the design of what is most important. And usually what's most important is Rob, you termed it, the skeletal structure and the individual components.

00:17:01 Kevin Mako: Now that you've got them kind of mapped out, you can think about usability and then apply that to improving and modifying the design, which usually then comes into the more intense

00:17:10 Kevin Mako: work, which is your hardcore industrial mechanical design CAD. And if there's electronics, of course, you're doing your electronics integration as well.

00:17:19 Kevin Mako: So talk a bit about, you know, moving from scale. sketching and putting these things together to actually modifying the design to CAD and how important

00:17:26 Kevin Mako: it is to work collaboratively with the inventor, thinking about end

00:17:30 Rob Colgan: customers throughout that transition from sketchout components and design going to actual full -fledged CAD design.

00:17:38 Rob Colgan: Yeah, once you have a sketch or a blocked in CAD model and you're ready to show that to the client, that's a very big step because it helps them visualize their product.

00:17:48 Rob Colgan: And that's the first time they're actually seeing it in a 3D space or 2D. if it's a sketch, that initial view sparks so many questions

00:17:56 Rob Colgan: and really helps get that collaborative process started with the client. Because a lot of the times it is a collaborative

00:18:02 Rob Colgan: process. Like the client themselves might know more about that field that that product is based in much more than I do.

00:18:10 Rob Colgan: And I rely on that collaboration to ensure the success of their product. So once they see it in a visual space, that's when the sparks start flying. We look at ways to

00:18:19 Rob Colgan: improve the components that I've chosen on a skeletal level. And then we can start to, you know, shrinking or, you know, enlargement.

00:18:27 Rob Colgan: Maybe the battery's not big enough. Maybe they have certain power requirements.

00:18:30 Kevin Mako: Basically, we fine-tune those initial components and get the bones of the product as strong as possible before we make our way into the industrial design aspect.

00:18:40 Kevin Mako: This is really important because you've essentially got two main stakeholder this year. You've got the innovators and the inventors and the design team.

00:18:46 Kevin Mako: And whether it's, you're doing your own design, then you are the innovator and the design team.

00:18:51 Kevin Mako: If you're working with, whether it's in-house or agency or you're working at the corporate level with your

00:18:55 Kevin Mako: design team, the reality is you've got these two distinct minds, the visionary and the engineer essentially, right?

00:19:00 Kevin Mako: And the designers are really figuring out how things work and the best practices around user engagement and historical information, all that stuff with a

00:19:09 Kevin Mako: tremendous amount of experience. However, what they don't have, no matter how experience of a designer they are, they don't have your mind as the inventor.

00:19:18 Kevin Mako: The inventor, that is your vision. You have seen this output. You were the one who had that aha moment. No one else in the world had it.

00:19:25 Kevin Mako: You were the one who had it and you chased that thing. So it's really important here to combine that industrial design, skill and engineering

00:19:33 Kevin Mako: and history with your vision for the product. That collaboration is where, you know, Rob's talking about it happens really at a granular

00:19:41 Kevin Mako: level, starting just component by component and then working your way up to the holistic vision of the actual product itself.

00:19:48 Kevin Mako: So Rob, as we move into visual design, one of the things you obviously like to do is look at products that the client likes that's on the market.

00:19:55 Kevin Mako: Unrelated or related, it doesn't really matter. What we really want to grasp is the visual understanding of how the client sees that because modern isn't just modern.

00:20:03 Kevin Mako: Everybody wants modern, sexy, sophisticated, clean, simple design these days, or at least you should, especially if you're a new up-and-coming startup.

00:20:12 Kevin Mako: But there's different types of modern. There's different types of 2023 design. So the key is to really understand what the client's vision is and then to use design

00:20:21 Kevin Mako: experience to make sure it makes tremendous sense from both a visual and a mechanical understanding of the product itself.

00:20:27 Kevin Mako: So Rob, talk a bit about that transition going from all the kind of sketchwork

00:20:32 Rob Colgan: and ideation and component and skeleton, going to actually moving into real CAD design of the first version of the product in 3D CAD.

00:20:41 Rob Colgan: This is a fun transitional period of the product development process. It's time to have fun with the design. You make a good point.

00:20:47 Rob Colgan: It's, you know, a lot of people love simple, sleek, sexy, modern design. But what is modern design? To me, modern design is something that's clean and timeless.

00:20:56 Rob Colgan: Nothing more modern than being timeless. It'll outlast anything that's following a trend, especially if you're creating expensive tooling.

00:21:03 Rob Colgan: You don't want to have to redo that tooling because, you know, you followed a trend. And, you know, next year that trends out.

00:21:08 Rob Colgan: So it's important just to keep your design as simple as possible. I know it's been beaten to death, but the kiss principle is very crucial.

00:21:15 Rob Colgan: You know, you look at the externals, what can be added, what can be taken away. It's what I follow every time I put pen to paper. Our motto is brilliantly simple design at Mako.

00:21:24 Rob Colgan: That's what I try and follow every time I put pen to paper. I don't want to get carried away with design features.

00:21:29 Rob Colgan: I know there's a bit of pressure to make it look as sexy as possible, but honestly, keeping your design as clean and minimal is best because it's not only you that has to

00:21:37 Rob Colgan: appreciate the design, it's your entire market. And a lot of the times the clients can get caught up in ensuring that that product looks best to them.

00:21:45 Rob Colgan: That's something that I have to remind people a lot of. It's not just you. It's everyone else that this has to appeal to.

00:21:50 Rob Colgan: And the best way to do that is keep things neutral. Like when you're selling a home, you paint your walls neutral colors so they can be appealing to the masses as

00:21:56 Rob Colgan: opposed to just you. So that's something that's important to remember. Keep your design as simple as possible. Not only does it ensure for a more timeless design, but

00:22:05 Rob Colgan: it keeps your upfront cost low because you're not having all these external parts or slides inside of your tooling to create different standoffs or features.

00:22:13 Rob Colgan: My father always told me it's a complex road to simplicity that always rings in my ears every time I get carried away with feature creep

00:22:21 Kevin Mako: and adding too many frills to the product. So he's very right. I end up deleting things until I get back to that core

00:22:28 Kevin Mako: functionality of the product and it turns out to be a better design overall. So that's really important because a lot of people underappreciate what it takes to be

00:22:37 Kevin Mako: simple in terms of design and clean, right? Like that is an end state. One of the things that people come with this Yeah, I want the product to be simple.

00:22:43 Kevin Mako: It should be seamlessly user friendly, very intuitive, and all of the sorts of buzzwords, let's call it. Well, the reality is to get there requires a lot of complexity.

00:22:53 Kevin Mako: You have to expand out and figure out all the components and elements, figure out what that neutral zone is between all the different, let's call it, features or claims or

00:23:02 Kevin Mako: desires, needs, etc.

00:23:04 Kevin Mako: Find that golden intersection in the middle of that Zen diagram. That is what creates a simple product.

00:23:09 Kevin Mako: So, of course, as you're mentioning, Rob, it's very efficient to really be thinking of this right from day one.

00:23:14 Kevin Mako: You mentioned it going all the way back, even to like component selection, even earlier, actually, as we're going into the PGD,

00:23:19 Kevin Mako: figuring out into component selection and how we actually put this together and then keeping that design very modern, very crisp, seamless.

00:23:25 Kevin Mako: If you're thinking about these things early, it makes your design more efficient. So you have to balloon out a little bit.

00:23:30 Kevin Mako: There is a little bit of complexity to figure out what that simplicity is, to figure out where the middle of that Zen diagram sits.

00:23:37 Kevin Mako: But then once you have that, that really creates. for a great, simple, easy-to-sell product.

00:23:43 Rob Colgan: And that is core. Rob, what are some of the tools? Obviously, we talked about some of the things you used in sketch design. What are the tools?

00:23:52 Rob Colgan: How does it get a bit more advanced when you go into actual industrial design and rendering and that sort of stuff?

00:23:57 Rob Colgan: Yes, once we pass the early stages of visualizing the product, getting those core features down, now it's time to start taking things a little bit more seriously and thinking about

00:24:07 Rob Colgan: manufacturing. This is where big programs come in and that focus on design for manufacturing.

00:24:13 Rob Colgan: They allow you to split up your housing and shell it out. How thick do I make the walls of this

00:24:17 Kevin Mako: plastic product? What's the use case? Is this thing going to be beat up like a video game controller? Do I have to thicken those walls up a bit more?

00:24:25 Kevin Mako: Yeah, focusing on how the user's going to interact with this product. What's the scale of this product? Building it out in 3D space is very important.

00:24:32 Kevin Mako: And this is really important as well that we're looking at all these different types of design

00:24:36 Kevin Mako: for manufacturing elements, even though we're just kind of cresting into the first CAD design

00:24:42 Kevin Mako: of it. We start with pretty advanced software for design for manufacturing because we want to be efficient, especially working with startups.

00:24:49 Kevin Mako: A lot of the time, if you design it all the way to this final thing and then have to re-engineer it all for production at the very end, it's incredibly

00:24:56 Kevin Mako: costly. It's just generally inefficient. I know I keep coming back around to the word, but that's what

00:25:00 Kevin Mako: it is. So the reality is, the earlier that you can actually start building in robust software that can carry all the way through to and including manufacturing,

00:25:11 Kevin Mako: the easier it is to design, engineer, test, re-engineer, prototype, re-engineer, as you're going through those various phases, tighter and tighter and tighter designs,

00:25:20 Kevin Mako: so you get a great output at the end for the actual producer. So that's a big reason. I love how you brought that up, Rob, of moving to serious software earlier on in the process,

00:25:29 Kevin Mako: even though you're just starting to work on the visuals and the engineering, largely in concept, but this concept is going to eventually get more,

00:25:36 Rob Colgan: more detail to the point where we actually do start into prototyping. What are some of the things

00:25:40 Rob Colgan: you actually like to do to visualize the concept after you've built out the CAD, external, internal, what do you like to do in terms of showcasing that work?

00:25:49 Rob Colgan: This is the fun part. Once you have the CAD model designed, you're happy with how it looks. Now it's time to throw it into a photorealistic rendering program.

00:25:57 Rob Colgan: This helps the inventor get a sense as to how it's going to look in the real world.

00:26:01 Rob Colgan: It's one thing to play around with it in the CAD model, but once you put it into a photorealistic rendering software gets some nice perspective on there.

00:26:08 Rob Colgan: You can play around materials and the finishes. And you can actually take materials and finishes of real products and apply them to your CAD model.

00:26:15 Kevin Mako: And it looks like a real product. I've fooled many people with renderings on the screen. They think it's an actual, they think I've made the product. But in actuality, there's some

00:26:23 Kevin Mako: really kick-ass rendering softwares out there that can help you visualize how your product looks in the real world. Rob, really appreciate all that.

00:26:31 Kevin Mako: And that's always such a highlight at the Again, when you get to do all those visual renderings to show both how the external

00:26:36 Kevin Mako: that's going to look, but also the internal, what are all the guts and the pieces? How do they go together and even do things in motion and all this sort of stuff?

00:26:43 Kevin Mako: It really allows you to amplify the tools, even just in concept before we even got into prototyping.

00:26:48 Rob Colgan: I know we don't have a ton of time today, Rob, so I really appreciate all your words of wisdom, your explanations of the early phases of conceptual design and some of the best

00:26:56 Rob Colgan: tips and practices along the way. Thanks again for being on the show and we'll be talking to you soon. Likewise, Kevin, it's been a blast. Thank you.

00:27:03 Rob Colgan: and we'll talk soon. Take care.

00:27:04 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review.

00:27:12 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:27:21 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako. North America is a leading expert on product development for physical product startups. Huge thanks to our sponsors, PTC,

00:27:29 Narrator: and their two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions. Onshape and Creo and Mako Design + Invent.

00:27:35 Narrator: The original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:27:42 Narrator: Thanks for joining and see you next time.