Dennis was always asked same question when he was mentoring hardware startups: Who comes first when developing a hardware product? Industrial designer or electrical engineer?
I am pretty sure this issue bothers most of the startup teams. According to Dennis experience, a lot of startups they go ID, industrial design first. Because they can request designer to develop sexy sketches and 3D renderings, putting them on presentation to catch more attentions from angels or venture capital. Even they don’t have any POC, Proof of concept or demo board to show their technology. With these design drawings the project is more look like close to commercial production stage, not staying in concept stage.
The short-cut to bypass the mine-field
The answer is clear and simple. If you never develop similar product/technology before, it’s better to start from electrical engineering. Let’s do it inside-out.
You are still working on electrical issues, meaning your key components will be changed, replaced very fast in one single day. You are not able to estimate what the PCB size might be. In that case, industrial designer can’t give you a reasonable dimension for enclosure. They develop those ideas freely without any constrain. The result those designs look sexy also junk to you, the PCBA can’t fit with form-factor perfectly. This in not what you want.
The secret recipe guiding you how to cook delicious meal looks like this:
From far left to far right: Demo-board, PCB Bare-board, PCB Assembly & Working prototype with ID, ME, EE integrated.
Step 1
EE starts to build a demo-board to simulate the optimized electrical circuits to be developed.
Step 2
EE estimates the true PCB size according to demo board and handovers it to product designer. They will start to develop concept design base on the PCB size you offer.
Step 3
ID issues PCB 2D outline drawing for EE’s layout. Enclosure design also follows same PCB size as reference to build 3D model. Then the industrial designer (ID), mechanical engineer (ME) and electrical engineer (EE) have to co-working together to get the integrate everything. Everybody stays on same page to go through the whole product developing process.
Step 4
Everybody will be very busy from now. The industrial designer keeps working on design details to get an eye-catching sexy design for market.
The mechanical engineer starts to add necessary structures for plastic or metal parts molding e.g. rib, boss, snap, thickness, draft angle…etc.
Electrical engineer processes for block diagram, PCB layout, electrical diagram, gerber file, and making it into a PCBA which stands for PCB Assembly. PCBA is made by SMT or DIP equipment, mounting or welding all electrical components on PCB bare board.
Conclusions
Dennis make the conclusion simpler:
Build it from inside-out. If your new product to be developed is relevant with IoT then EE is always the core, everything should start from here. Find a tool kit like Arduino or Raspberry Pi or making your own demo board to validate all functions you need. When all tests are done, you will figure out what PCB assembly size might be for future and what parts are going to be listed in BOM, meaning Bill of Material. In that case, industrial design can run before electrical, engineering without any problem at all.
References link
IDEO: A global design company. We create positive impact through design.
https://www.ideo.com/
Design and innovation that transforms.
https://www.frogdesign.com/
Taiwan the Heart of Asia, the Island Country of Hardware Innovation. 