Top 5 factors to effectively design your electronics product

The neo digital natives are the most materially penetrating and the most technologically savvy generation till date. This generation were around the time when smartphones were launched, online social media & networking services were created, and apps becoming a buzzword and so from their earliest years. This generation’s love towards technically superior products is a better love story than Romeo & Juliet. The product usage by this set of consumers ranges from just being a pacifying material to being an entertainment medium to all the way aiding in education, helping in effective business operation, and keeping a tab about one’s health and in many more facets and this generation is the largest consumer of these products and they just don’t settle for anything less or normal, when it comes to aesthetics and comfort.

For any company, success can be measured by putting their product in the market that meets the needs of the end-customer. While the need is met, the most revered aspect in any products are their functional use and the outward appearance of the product along with the quality delivered. For example, Fitbit revolutionised the wearable industry with a sleek design that fits contentedly and functionally around the wrist. 

While success cannot be guaranteed, close adherence to proven methodologies can significantly limit the chance of failure. Those methodologies fall into two distinct areas: design and evolution. The critical link between these two distinct stages is easily damaged if continuity is not maintained. 

Designing a consumer product is like an art; vision and creativity walk hand in hand when producing a user friendly and aesthetically appealing product for the consumer use. The produce should be accepted by the consumer, irrespective of why, where, whom, when and how it is being used or placed. 

Designing and producing a product for market acceptance comes with a lot of challenges and there is 5 key considerations which will help in overcoming them.

1. Intuitiveness:

In a gamut of infinite choices on products; the initial couple of minutes of provisional usage is the most important and decides the success of the product. Intuitiveness also equates with minimalism by largely removing the non-essential features thus by a making someone understand and enable in maximum utilization. If the end consumer could understand how their problem gets solved with the product’s design they’ll continue using until they have a reason not to.

2. Functionally informing:

While the look and feel are equally important for the success of the product and to ring the right chord with the buyer, the primary aspect lies in thinking about what the product does to the user and how it works. For example, Apple designs and packages its products with nil embellishment. Their flagship products couldn’t be more visually simple. 

3. Design for Sustainability:

Sustainable awareness begins with design. There have been many companies which have been compelled to shut their shop, just because the components for their apex product started to end up rarer and rarer. This doesn’t always need to be electronic components; materials themselves can emerge as hard to get hold of, condemned by general public for their utilization or even get banned. 

4. Design to Cost/ Design for Manufacturing:

When designing a novel product, a company’s profit is either made or broken based on the critical cost factors that needs to be overlooked. Production cost can be minimized and minimal to nil product or process redesign can be ensured by incorporating Design to Cost and Design for Manufacturing strategies. Consider investing in product development consulting services to help you determine the best DTC strategy for your products.

5. Testing & Validation:

Rigorous & real environment testing, considering multiple generic scenarios before the product hitting the market will ensure the failure rate to be very minimal and in turn reducing the returns & replacements.

Designing electronic products while taking into account all these considerations is difficult, but this is the current nature of electronics design. Working with more complex electronics there are many more underlying aspects to produce a proper-quality output, and in such cases the developers are advised to engage with an expert partner for design & development early in the process. Large number of solution developers, while capable of developing the Proof of Concept, fail to understand that scaling up brings additional challenges including various certification requirements and as a result are forced to redesign at later stage. Timely engagement with expert partners will obviate such redesign requirements, resulting in improved time to market and cost saving.

The article has been written by Vinay Solanki, GM and Head, Napino Digital Solutions