POC – Taiwan the Heart of Asia, the Island Country of Hardware Innovation.

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/

Hardware is hard, but not that hard.

Even your dear mom went to Costco to prepare delicious meals for families, she still finds it a challenging job. In fact, there are some basic rules to follow to develop a hardware product. Here In this blog, Dennis will reveal you some techniques from his pocket. The development of a hardware product, from the very beginning idea to mass production, we can divide it into two stages:
1. POC, Proof of Concept proof of concept
2. MP, Mass-production
The challenges that start-up teams faced in these two phases are extremely different.

From 0 to 1, get your first POC ready

POC, Proof of Concept refers to from 0 to1. A concept that has been in your mind for a long time and turns it into a set of model/mockup/prototype that can represent your original ideas. Once done, such a rough prototype is no longer ambiguous for storytelling. It can be touched and felt from engineering point of view. However, the set of Proof of concept is just good enough for R&D team to see the whole picture, to take reference for the next step of optimization and improvement.

Once the Proof of concept is complete, the next step is to optimize it. This optimization process is called EVT, Engineering Verification Test. Because this POC uses the materials around you and might be Ardunio development board is used (if you know coding as well), most of the cases are: ugly, the casing is broken, the circuit is easily disconnected, and you can’t take it to see the potential customers or the angels who may be interested in your project, consumers are even less likely to spend money on your junk, and you have to quickly rebuild it and make it looks as sexy as possible. Now you have to co-work with external resources to make this happen. At this moment, you need at least four professionals to assist you:
1. ID, Industrial designer, or product designer
2. ME, Mechanical engineer
3. EE, Electrical engineer
4. PM, Product manager

Through the collaboration of above professional designers, engineers, and PMs, at this stage of EVT, we completed the sexy appearance, mechanical structure that meets mass production requirements, and size-optimized PCB. Appearance and function, both beautiful and operable. It looks like a working prototype very close to commercial production. With this set of functional models, start-up teams can start doing the following things that might with chance to change your whole life:
1. Go to make a crowdfunding video.
2. Go to potential angels to raise funds.
3. Go to buyers for order.

From DVT stage, preparing for mass-production

After the completion of EVT, there are stages such as DVT, PVT, MP…etc. There are different levels of challenges waiting for the startups team. We will not reveal too much implementation details in this article, let everyone have a whole picture of how hardware product is developed. Simply put, this article is like a subway map to let the startups team know: Where they are now? Where is the next stop and where should they get off the train. With future blog posts, more details will be revealed for your reference.

As mentioned earlier, Dennis has an industrial designer background, has been a product manager for 10+ years, is the head of international marketing and business departments, and has served in the mold injection molding factory in past 20 years career. After setting up his own company, it is committed to providing global hardware startups from 0 to 1 to mass production service and has many years of practical experience. The posts in this blog are all original created by Dennis. He is delighted for sharing his painstaking with everyone here.