When you work with a professional product design engineer, you’re leveraging years of experience, skills, and expensive tools to bring your idea to life. As they take you through the process of making a tangible product out of your imagination – something you can sell or create a business around – you elevate your entrepreneurial ventures. Let’s go through how entrepreneurs and businesses can work with product design engineers like E3K, including the steps of design, from idea generation to selling the finished product.
What are Product Design Engineers?
A product design engineer doesn’t just come up with ideas and make them look good. They’re someone with extensive engineering knowledge as well as design skills and a strong understanding of the product market. They help to craft, test, develop, improve, and release physical products that you may not have been able to create on your own.
These engineers use their expertise and software to design the first iterations and prototypes of the product, test the product to ensure it’s fit for consumers and works well, and create the final product that will be released to the public. When you’re creating a new product, working with this kind of expert gives you a big leg up, and increases your chance of success. While designing on your own may take a long time and cost a lot of money, hiring a product design engineer is an investment that will create a better product, increasing revenue in the long run.
1. Initial Sketches
Starting work with a product design engineer could begin with a clear concept you’ve come up with – you just need someone with expertise to design it. Or, you might be starting a lot earlier in the process. If you have a general idea of a product you’d like to make, or a problem you want to solve, but not a specific creation in mind yet, the product design engineer can help you with this early idea generation. They’ll work with you to decide on a clearer target. What do you want to create? How might it look? How might it fit in the market? They make all of this clear and give you the best guidelines.
In the early stages, you may be thinking:
- What’s already available like this idea?
- What problem does this idea solve?
- How can my design solve this problem in a different way?
- How can this product be packaged to appeal to consumers?
As you work with your product design engineer, they’ll take your ideas and the current market trends to craft a reasonable design. First, they’ll sketch it out to show you early concepts, then they may begin creating more intricate designs using computer programs. They’ll work with you as they go. This means you can approve their work along the way, making sure the product turns out how you want it to – while also marrying in their expertise.
2. Prototyping
At E3K, we employ several prototyping tactics. A major player in modern product design is FEA, finite element analysis. This is a computer-based prototyping method we use to test product designs against all kinds of scenarios they may be faced with, so that the final product is robust, cost effective, and lasts a long time. It makes sure the quality is just right!
We also offer 3D printing services, which is a great way to bring your ideas to life. Using 3D printing is cost efficient and fast, allowing you to hold your design in your hands easily. As you begin to look at prototypes, you can get a feel for the product and begin to tweak it, since the product may seem different once you see it in person, even if it’s perfect on paper.
3. Testing
As prototypes continue to be made and tested, the product design engineer is constantly tweaking the design so it performs most functionally while meeting the goals of the business. The product can change drastically during this period as they discover how it will perform in the real world.
Outside of the engineers testing the prototypes, the testing phase may include beta testing from potential consumers. As people try the product out in real life, great feedback can be discovered about how function it is and if people would actually buy it. This is where even further tweaks can be made.
Product design engineers are master problem solvers. They take all the issues that come up during testing (or feedback from consumers) and turn them around to make the product even stronger. This phase is incredibly important for creating the ideal product.
4. Refinement
With testing and prototyping complete, the product design engineer can now work with you to refine the product to be the best it can be: something that’s both high quality and functional, and represents your brand.
As they get ready to finalise the product and launch it, they might ask questions like:
- Does the product we’ve designed meet the needs of the market?
- Does it appeal aesthetically to the target market?
- Does it function well?
- Is it easy to use?
- What price point is feasible, based on the cost of making the product?
- What are the target market willing to spend on it?
Contact E3K – Product Design Engineers
Are you seeking professional product design engineers or new product development engineers with extensive experience and a track record of satisfied clients? E3K’s award-winning mechanical engineering design consultants have been designing and developing products for over 20 years. We can help you at any stage in the development process, from idea generation to advanced computer simulation or physical prototype testing.
We’d love to chat about your new product ideas and how we can help bring them to life. Contact us at E3K today for a consultation.