Today’s client generally wants a product that is economical to manufacture, elegant, and robust.  Robust products have an advantage in the market place.  This is especially true in this age of the easy accessibility to user reviews over the Internet.

According to the Wikipedia,

Robustness is the quality of being able to withstand stresses, pressures, or changes in procedure or circumstance. A system, organism or design may be said to be “robust” if it is capable of coping well with variations (sometimes unpredictable variations) in its operating environment with minimal damage, alteration or loss of functionality.

Why is robustness important?  Robust products perform as expected in a wide variety of situations, environments and contexts.  Robust products often outperform expectations and delight users.  Robust products have significantly reduced warranty returns.  These products leave a positive impression on the user.  Customers often respond by becoming local, or internet, evangelists for the products.  These customers may also become life long users and purchasers of the product, or service.

Developing criteria to gauge the robustness of a product can difficult.  Some industries and user contexts (such as military) already have specifications in place to gauge the robustness of a product.  Unfortunately, many industries do not think in terms of robust products.  Robustness can be a broad and vague requirement, especially if the approach to defining qualitative (and subjective) terms is not organized and methodical.

A good way to understand robustness, is to look at areas that are impacted by the robustness of a product.  One area that robustness impacts is manufacturing.  A robust product tends to be easier to manufacture because it is less sensitive to tolerances and other small variations in the process.  When a product is less sensitive to changes in the manufacturing process, it is usually less expensive to manufacture.  Robustness at the manufacturing level is often the result of well planned and executed design that avoided “mission creep”.

Robustness at the user level is manifested in many ways.  One example is having the product perform as expected on a continuing basis.  An example of a robust design is the ignition switch in your car and the key to turn the switch.  This switch is often used twice a day for ten or more years.  The key that you started your car with today is probably in your pocket, or purse, as you are reading this article.  That key is constantly (while carried in a pocket or purse) in contact with other metal objects such as change and other keys.  Many times, at the end of the day, keys are tossed into a bowl or other container for overnight storage.  Car keys see constant wear and abuse from the user and the environment.  However, when you walk out to your car you, expect the key to turn the ignition and the car to start.  The devices are used in a wide variety of environments from cold weather in the winter to hot weather in the summer.  The user may be wearing thick winter gloves.  Keys also must be adaptable for use in a wide variety of environments from a man’s trouser pocket to a woman’s purse.  They must be small enough to fit in a purse or pocket.  The car key and ignition switch are examples of two very robust devices that function very reliably for an extended period in wide variety or circumstances and environments.

Robustness must be designed into the product from the beginning.  One way to develop robust products is to determine (in the beginning of the project) exactly what product it is that you really wanted to design.  Products must be well defined and targeted.  Mission creep (the addition of unnecessary or previously unanticipated features) is the enemy of robust products.  Mission creep is where the product design mission is expanded from the initial, targeted product.  Mission creep diverts resources and time away from the appropriate product in an effort to extend the product into areas, or features, that aren’t critical for the success of the product.  This lack of focus can result in extra product features at a cost to the robustness of the product.

Robustness also comes from a commitment to integrity in all stages of the design and manufacturing process.  Customers expect robust products.  Companies delivering robust products exceed the expectations of the customer.  They are also creating an environment that encourages repeat purchases from satisfied clients and that is good for the bottom line.

Montie Roland is President of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild. You can reach Montie by email at: montie@montie.com

If you are an entrepreneur and you have the eureka moment when you experience the flash of brilliance that leads to your new product idea, what do you do?

Well, most people want to ask someone else’s opinion about how whether, or not, the product will succeed in the marketplace. Asking advice from someone you trust is normally a good idea. When it comes to protecting your ability to patent your new product, it is still a good idea to get advice, but you need to use a simple tool called a non-disclosure agreement before you start the conversation.

Patents are only issued for novel ideas that have been reduced to practice and have not been disclosed to the public. Public disclosure can prevent a patent from being issued. One example of public disclosure is where a product is shown at a trade show. Showing a product at a trade show is considered to be an “offer for sale” and thus public disclosure. A presentation of the product concepts, or underlying technologies, at a seminar could be considered public disclosure. A conversation about the product could also be considered public disclosure, depending on the situation.

Conversations with employees are not generally considered public disclosure.

One way to avoid this pitfall is to require a non-disclosure agreement before discussing your product. Non-disclosure agreements are commonly called NDAs. Non-disclosure agreements normally are one to five pages long. Their primary purpose is to agree, in writing, that the first party is going to disclose confidential information to another party, in exchange the other party agrees to not disclose the first party’s confidential information. This agreement (when properly worded and executed) helps prevent the loss of patentability through public disclosure.

A sample NDA can be downloaded at www.montie.com/forms/nda.rtf

Montie Roland is President-Emeritus of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association.  Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild.  You can reach Montie by email at: montie@montie.com

By Montie Roland, RTP Product Development Guild

Morrisville — Our firm receives inquiries from inventors and early stage entrepreneurs fairly frequently.  We tend to break down incoming inquiries into four groups.  The first group is inventors.  Inventors are everyday people with an idea, but no organization to backup the idea.  Entrepreneurs are individuals, or a group of individuals, with an idea for a product and a plan for an organization to develop, produce, and distribute that product.  Start-ups are groups that are actively working on a daily basis developing the product and the organization necessary to make that product a success.  Corporate clients are those in the process of adding another product to their suite of products.

Most design firms are not very interested in spending a lot of time talking with inventors that show up at the door.  Many of these folks have great product ideas, however, most inventors are lacking two necessary elements for product success.  The first is financial support and the second is the lack of ambition and vision.  Product development is expensive.  Once the product is developed, it is even more expensive to produce, stock, distribute, market and sell the product.  Most inventors do not have access to this level of funding and support. 

My impression, after talking with numerous inventors, is that most inventors simply give up, lacking the drive and ambition to make their product concept into a reality.  They struggle with making the transition from being an inventor with an idea to an entrepreneur with a plan and a vision. 

One possibility for failure is that the inventor has a pre-conception that all they need is an idea and a contact with a major corporation.  That corporation will see that product concept and write them a huge check for the inventor’s idea.  This myth is promoted by the “invention submission” companies.  The reality is that most corporations will not even talk to inventors about product concepts that have not been patented. 

Another possibility is that many inventors don’t know what steps they need to take to get a product to market, so are overwhelmed and give up.  There is very little in the way of support structure for inventors and entrepreneurs.  High-flying startups get lots of attention and funding, but that doesn’t help the inventors, entrepreneurs and early stage startups.

Many design firms are hesitant to even provide proposals to inventors and entrepreneurs because so few of those proposals turn into billable hours.  Startups are another example of organizations that often aren’t in a position to purchase professional services.  Most early-stage startups don’t have any product sales, and are not in a position to attract venture capital, so they don’t have the funds to pay a consultant, or design firm, for needed services.  Few consultants, and design firms, are in a financial position to accept the risk of receiving equity (or stock options) from a start up in lieu of fees.

The RTP Product Development Guild is designed to help drive new products to market.  This is accomplished by creating teams of consultants to help in the early stages of the product design.  These six member teams are made of local professionals in the product design community from various disciplines.  Depending on the product, or service, these teams may include disciplines such as engineering, industrial design, software, business, legal, sales and marketing.  This structure allows team members to share the risk of working on these projects while giving the product champion (inventor or entrepreneur) the needed product development support. 

Guild projects last six months and follow a structured format.  The product champion (individual inventor or entrepreneur) meets with Guild team members every two weeks to define, and refine, the product concept into a viable product.  Participation in this structured method helps the product champion overcome many of the pitfalls that haunt entrepreneurs trying to develop a product without professional support.

Information about the Guild is available at:  http://www.rtpproductguild.com.

Montie Roland is president of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also president of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville.

The RTP Product Development Guild’s purpose is to provide consultancy services to startups and small companies across a wide variety of specialties. Guidance will focus on commercializing product ideas and technology.

Design, by it’s very nature, is an iterative process. The product design process begins with creating preconceptions. Those preconceptions are used to create a prototype. The prototype is then tested and the test results are evaluated. The evaluations are used to form new preconceptions and the process begins again. These iterative cycles can focus on the entire design, or they can focus on a small area (or technology) of the product. This process relies on prototyping and testing. Prototypes come in many forms. The word “prototype” is commonly refers to a working model of a product, or product concept. A written, or verbal, description of the product could also be a prototype. A sketch could also serve as prototype. The exact nature of the prototype isn’t as important as the effect of the prototype, which is to validate the success, or failure, of the product. As the design progress, the cycles of iteration become more focused, as the developers refine the product.

Different industries have differing levels of toleration number of iterations in a design sequence. Machine design is a good example of an industry with a low tolerance for iteration in the design process. Engineers that design machinery attempt to practice design in a very linear fashion. The goal in the machine design industry is to reach a finished, and proven, design in the least amount of time with the least number of changes or redesign cycles. This approach attempts to follow the straightest possible path to a completed design. This “straight arrow” approach leads us to classify this industry’s design methodology as a linear one. Even with this approach, iterations are necessary. Design iterations inevitably occur during the process of design a new piece of equipment. The can be caused by a machine, or system within a machine, that doesn’t perform as expected. When this happens, that part, or sub-system, is redesigned and redeployed. Because of these issues the machine design industry does not have a completely linear process.

The linear nature of machine design is driven by two factors. The first factor is the prevalence of a function requirement and the minimization of aesthetic requirements. In my opinion, the biggest cause of the use of a linear design process in the machine design industry is the percentage of engineering and design costs as compared to the total cost of producing and marketing the machinery. Many machines are custom, or semi-custom, to the specific application (often manufacturing). This results in a small number of units to amortize the engineering costs against. This is a situation where the cost of design and engineering is a significant percentage of the total cost to produce the each machine. As a result, savings in the cost of design have a significant impact on the profitability of that design. This is the exact opposite of consumer products that have a low cost of design, relative to the total cost of producing the product.

Consumer products are examples of products with a very iterative design process. These products are typically produced in high volumes. This allows the cost of design and engineering to be amortized over a large volume of product sales. In higher volume products, there is more incentive to spend more time on the industrial design and front-end design (fuzzy front end) stages of the design process.

Any product, or service, will be judged by the market place based on the experience that the product provides. Machinery is evaluated on institutional-experience criteria including performance, ease-of-use, speed of installation, return on investment (ROI) and uptime. Consumer products are evaluated on end-user experience criteria that include ease-of-use, aesthetics, coolness, usefulness, perception that the product creates and the experience that the user has when interacting with the product. The latter criteria can be very subjective and difficult to capture in any sort of written document.

Products with great user experiences often succeed in the marketplace, where products with poor user experiences fail to generate sales. This does not mean that user experience is the only indicator of potential success. A product may have a compelling value to the customer that overcomes a poor user experience. Typically these products are the first in their class and provide some functionality that is new to the industry. This is a case where the value to the customer is high and the customer will accept a poor user experience in exchange for that functionality. As a segment of an industry matures, the user experience becomes a more important indicator of how well the product will sell in the marketplace.

The current game console war is a good example of this contrast between functionality and usability. The PlayStation 3 is a game console that has an average user experience, but provides state-of-the-art computer graphics. The Wii is a game console that provides average computer graphics, but has a wonderful user experience. The Wii has outsold the PlayStation 3 by about twenty percent.

Product iteration allows the design team to explore a variety of concepts. The evaluation of these concepts helps to decide which concepts to integrate into the product and which concepts to drop from the product. Many times the issue isn’t whether a concept is good, or bad, but rather “is it appropriate?” This is especially true when the design team is evaluating, and improving, the user experience of the proposed product.

Product developers, designers and engineers use the available resources (which are always finite) to work towards achieving the best product possible. The nature of the product and the expectations of the industry and customer ultimately drive the exact nature of the design process. Design is iterative. Product designers rely on experience and a refined process of iterating through the design cycles to create the next product. Often a designer achieves success not by any one single action, but by the consistent application of an educated, and refined, design process.

Montie Roland is President of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild. You can reach Montie by email at: montie@montie.com

by Montie Roland, Montie Design

Morrisville - Last week, I had the honor of being selected as a judge for an Interactionary Design Competition held by the Triangle chapter of the Usability Professionals Association (www.triupa.org). According to Scott Berkun (www.scottberkun.com), an interactionary is

 

“an experiment in design education. The idea is to explode the process of design by forcing insane time constraints, and asking teams of designers to work together in front of a live audience. From what we’ve seen, it forces the discussion of design process, teamwork, and organization, and asks important questions about how designers do what they do.”

The event was a lot of fun and helped the participants (and maybe even the audience) sharpen their design skills. The event began with a keynote presentation from Anthony D. Hall. Hall is responsible for making sure that the IBM.com website is easily usable by a worldwide audience. He spoke from the perspective of a usability professional who has a staff of researchers and developers whose only job is to make a website (with millions of pages) easier to use.

The Interactionary was driven by three teams and a panel of judges. The teams had ten minutes to design an interface to a voting booth. There was a twist however. The interface had to allow the user to find out more information about each candidate before voting. The interface also had to allow the voter to change his vote if the candidate that he voted for was not currently in the lead. The event started with first team being introduced to the design requirements. They were then give ten minutes to find a solution. During those ten minutes they were encouraged to do user research by polling the audience. They then had two minutes to present their solution and answer questions from the judges. We (the judges) rated the team on teamwork, approach / process, and the validity of their design. This continued until all of the teams had an opportunity to create a new interface based on the criteria.

This event didn’t teach the team members, or the audience, how to design. Instead it helped them sharpen their design skills. By creating an absurdly constrained situation, the format of the event forced the team members to act in a bold way, while having fun. Design is about pushing the boundaries and talking bold risks. Events like this make design fun. They make it easier for all to stay passionate about design. That passion gets translated into better products and services. When that happens, everyone wins.

The pictures from the event are at:

http://flickr.com/photos/waynesutton/sets/72157603027654523/

Montie Roland is President of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild. You can reach Montie by email at: montie@montie.com

The product development world, just like other industries, has its own language. One example of this “product speak” is the term product champion. Many products (and most of the very successful products) are driven by the vision of one person, or a small group of people. We call these people “product champions”.
Product champions drive new products to market through experience, use of available resources, drive, determination and vision. They have a vision for a product. They work with others around them to push that product out to the market. This new product can be an extension of existing products in a existing company. The vision may be bolder and push an existing company in a direction.

A good example of a new direction for an existing company is the Apple iPod. Apple is a computer company that struck out into the personal entertainment industry. The biggest leap is when a product champion has to build a new company around a new-to-world product. When that vision incorporates technology and design practices from two or more industries (what we call cross-pollination) the opportunity exists for a truly disruptive product. Disruptive products change the marketplace and can propel a manufacturer to a position of market leader.

Product developers categorize new products into four areas. The first category of product development deals with incremental advances. An example, is a company that makes 42-inch plasma televisions decides to create a 44-inch model. Generally, these products make incremental, or evolutionary, leaps forward in technology or design.

The next area is a class of products that are based on existing products, but make revolutionary leaps in the state of the technology or the design approach. These products can dramatically affect an entire industry and drive market share to new heights, or help a company establish a presence in a market space that they weren’t previously able to penetrate.

Me-too products are designed compete with existing products. These products may be new to company that manufactures them, but they are not new to the market. Me too products generally are designed as direct competitors. They are generally not very innovative in their design.

New-to-world products are exactly what the name implies. These products are often technologically innovative and higher risk. They do not exist in the current marketplace, or they use a technology or a design approach that is not currently available.

The Apple iPod was not a new-to-world product. An existing market space for MP3 players existed for several years before the iPod arrived on the scene. The designers of the iPod combined improvements in four key industries to make the iPod a massive success. Apple improved the state of the basic product by designing the click wheel interface. This interface was a significant improvement over the traditional interface provided by existing manufacturers such as Rio. These advancements were revolutionary in that industry.

Apple went farther by bundling the product with iTunes. iTunes was software product that leveraged Apple’s core competency with computers to deliver content over the internet. iTunes also made it simple and easy to update the iPod’s firmware. Previous MP3 players required more-than-average expertise to simply update the firmware. Apple changed the user expectations about how easy it should be to purchase and download music to the player. They also changed the industry by creating users that expected painless firmware updates through iTunes. While the iPod was not a new-to-world product, iTunes was a new-to-world product.

The product champions at Apple had the vision to create a well-integrated product that combined advancements from multiple industries including electronics, audio compression, internet technology, service, and software. The amazing part is that existing manufacturers in the MP3 player market space were concentrating on the player itself and the software to drive the player. At the time the internet was mainly be used a vehicle to move data, but not as an integrated part of the user experience. The product champions at Apple saw an opportunity to cross-pollinate between multiple industries and create a market dominating product.

The RTP Product Development Guild has core philosophy that the most disruptive products come from the cross-pollination of technology and design knowledge from two or more different industries.

Product champions do not necessarily have to have experience from within multiple industries. The key is to have a vision that integrates technologies and practices from multiple industries into a single product. Then you have an opportunity to create the next highly disruptive and highly successful product.

Starting a Product Development Guild has been a journey that has lasted about two and a half years. The first two years were mainly discussions. The last five months have mainly involved laying the groundwork for the guild. We have now moved into a mode where we are starting to recruit members and look at project submissions.

Tom Vass first mentioned the idea to me two years ago at Carolinas PDMA event. At the time, I really didn’t think much of the idea. It took several conversations for me to realize that the problem wasn’t with the concept, but rather in the articulation and execution of the concept. So we spent about two years, off and on, discussing the concept and refining how we articulated a complex sounding concept.

One of the critical questions in developing in the Guild is “why does the concept seem so complex?” The concept, in the simplest form I can come up with, goes something like this:

Consultants, and other product design professionals, band together in a contractual organization. This aspect of the organization most closely resembles a volunteer fire department. Guild members pay quarterly dues and an initiation fee to join. Guild members are proudly displayed in the Guild directory which is available online and in a print format next year.

Product champions submit project proposals to the guild in a structured format. The Guild evaluates each submission and picks the best submissions. The Guild looks for product concepts that are going to help launch product-driven companies. Products that combine technology from two different industries are given priority.

Once a product concept is selected, the product champion becomes the nucleus of a seven member team. Project champions can be inventors, entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs, a designee from a start-up company, or a designee from an existing corporation that has a product concept that they would like to spin-off into a new company. Six of the seven team members are product development professionals. These members could come from disciplines such as industrial design, engineering, software, electronics, business management, marketing or sales.

Projects run for six months. The goal of the project is to complete the fuzzy front end design of the product. At the start of the project, the Guild receives options for the client’s stock. These options can only be exercised upon a trigger event such as a sale or initial public offering (IPO). At the end of the project the Guild transfers a portion of those options to team members.

Projects are structured so Guild members spend two to four hours per week on the project. The product champions (client representative) spend fifteen to twenty hours per week on the project.

The team makes a presentation at the end of the project to selected angel investors and venture capitalists. This last step of the project is designed to help the client get funding for the next step in designing and then commercializing their product.

The goal is to complete twenty six month projects per year (ten every six months). This would add twenty new, high-growth companies to the RTP area each year and significantly impact the local economy. This means that the efforts of approximately one hundred and twenty Guild members can help drive the future economy in the regional area for the next ten to twenty years..

I am still struggling with how to present this in a thirty second elevator pitch. This is not an overly complex process when you consider the amount of work to be done. Sometimes I wonder if the previous presentation is trying to explain too much. Maybe the elevator pitch should go something like:

The RTP Product Development Guild is a confederation of product design, and business, who work together to help local entrepreneurs and businesses commercialize their products. The Guild seeks to improve the regional economy in North Carolina by helping create now product driven companies.

Salesmen reading this article are probably wondering why not just use the shorter version first. This is the difference between salesmen and product designers. Engineers and industrial designers often focus on how wonderful, and cool, the details are. A good salesman wants to convey just enough information to close the deal. They know that giving too much information is a possible way to talking your client out of doing business with you. The role of President of the Guild requires me to live in both worlds. This can be challenging at times. Product developers must always keep in mind that successful products find a balance between design and execution.

The chicken, or the egg, syndrome is alive and well at the RTP Product Development Guild. On one hand, we need a strong portfolio of consultants to attract product concept submissions. One the other hand we need strong product concepts to attract consultants. This means that there is going to be slow progress between now and the kick-off of the first project. We have spent the last month lining up product submissions and potential Guild members. The first inquiries about memberships are mostly coming from sales and marketing professionals. Another high interest area is the service providers. We have a class of Guild memberships that are designed to allow service providers to participate in the Guild without having to participate in a project team.

Another concurrent action item is to promote the Guild within the economic development community. North Carolina’s economic development community is heavily focused, and politically invested, in the mode of using massive tax incentives to bring existing companies to North Carolina. There are other efforts that focus on using the universities and community colleges as concentrators of innovation. The Guild believes that there is enough talent, dedication and ambition in the local community to create new product-driven companies. This “believe in the people” approach is counter-culture. The Guild isn’t relying on tax incentives or government grants to drive new products to market. We are relying on our members to work together and help lift new companies from the stage of “I have an idea” to the stage of “we just rented office space”. Dreams are best pursued by the dreamer. It is hard to pursue someone else’s dream. Product champions rev up your dreams, because you now have a home.

Montie Roland is President of the Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development Management Association. Roland is also President of Montie Design, a product development and prototyping firm in Morrisville, NC and the RTP Product Development Guild.    You can reach Montie by email at:  montie@montie.com

How to Price your New Product - Understanding Customer Value

Do you deeply understand the value that your products & services bring to your customers? Do they?

Two simple questions, and key input to your pricing strategy. Yet, most firms cannot answer them with confidence and support their answers with data. It gets even harder to answer this question early in new product development when all that is available is a product or service concept. Yet, this question is answerable in many markets in the concept stage of new product and service development.

The Carolinas Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association invites you to join an evening of networking and learning with Jeff Dupuie, Managing Director of Oakstone Partners:

• Keys to understanding the value your products bring to your customers.
• How to quantify the information.
• How to use customer value model approach to price new products.

Jeff will cover these issues using a case study in how a customer value model (CVM) was used to evaluate a series of new product /service offering concepts that offered the potential of breakthrough performance to customers. The CVM proved to be a useful tool, and in this case, the right tool, to provide insight into which concept offered the most value to customers. The goal of this case study is to provide an overview of the CVM tool and approach, and to demonstrate its use to pricing.

Please join us to exchange points of view, build relationships with your peers and as gain insights from our speaker:

Jeff Dupuie is a Managing Director of OakStone Partners, a local management consulting firm. He has over 15 years experience in management, consulting, and engineering roles. Prior to OakStone, Jeff served as a key member with BearingPoint’s turn-around consulting unit. Prior to that, he served as a Principal with PRTM’s product commercialization unit, leading their Portfolio and Resource Management practices. In industry, he has held commercialization and operations roles with The Ford Motor Company and with Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector. Jeff earned the Henry Ford Technology Award for outstanding technical achievement while at Ford. Jeff has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and an MBA, both from the University of Michigan.

Who Should Attend

Entrepreneurs, professionals, and decision-makers at all levels who have interest in new product development, including product managers, marketing managers, brand managers, engineers, and business development managers. This event qualifies as two (2) Professional Development Hours toward PDMA’s NPDP recertification.
Date: Thursday, October 25th, 2007
Time:  Networking & Registration 6-6:45 pm; Presentation and Q&A 6:45 – 8:00 pm; Pizz