Product Design and Rapid Prototyping
"We believe that most people don't truly know what they want until you show it to them."
That is why our design and prototyping service aims to get something into your hands as soon as possible.
Product Design
We help eliminate all the guesswork around what your customers want by turning your ideas into physical and digital prototypes as quickly as possible.
Rather than waiting until we have a finished design, we work with you throughout the whole process to quickly understand what works and what needs changing. By working closely with our clients we aim to get it right the first time.
We want to create products with you that are not just visually appealing, but also intuitive and easy for your target audience to use.
Test Rigs
Wolffsohn Research has built dozens of high precision, repeatable, and scalable test rigs for equipment manufacturers in a variety of industries. If you need a custom clamp, fixture, or experimental apparatus built, contact us and we can discuss your project.
Rapid Prototyping
Moving from concept sketch to 3D model and prototype has never been easier. At Wolffsohn Research, we accelerate the time-to-market and cost-efficiency of your projects. Our engineers and software development specialists partner with our design teams to create an MVP within weeks – not months or years.
MVP
We build Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) that are small and flexible enough to be changed quickly over time. Yet, they already have some of the key features in them to bring you valuable results. Through this process, we learn about your customers' needs and demands, so these can be incorporated quickly into the next iteration of your product.
Proof of Concept
The Proof Of Concept (POC) approach to product validation is about demonstrating functionality and verifying whether a particular idea is feasible for development. By developing a POC for you, we aim to increase your chances of developing a successful engineering solution and minimise waste caused by flawed assumptions or undeveloped ideas.
Previous Work
Our Processes
Discovery - Product and User Requirements
Defining what the problem is and whom the solutions must serve is the first and most important step in product design. It is crucial that this is not only defined, but continually reviewed throughout the entire development process. It is also important at this point to understand why a product is being produced as this factor can influence a number of different design criteria. The purpose of the discovery phase is not to solve the problem and it is vital that this is avoided to reduce the likelihood of biased thinking and design. This will ultimately make life easier in the long run.
Ideas - Sketches, Mockups & 3D Prototypes
Once we have a firm grasp of the problem it is now time to begin solving it. It is important to spend as much time as practicable coming up with as many different solutions as possible. This often pays dividends in the future as experience shows that most final designs end up as a combination of the original ideas.
Creativity is the name of the game and no idea is too ridiculous at this stage. Equally you don't need to reinvent the wheel, often existing solutions can offer some of the answers, and many problems have been solved by applying existing solutions to different problems. Potential solutions can and should be displayed in whatever medium best communicates the idea. These include: sketches, 3D models, mechanism prototypes, video etc.
The key is getting the idea across to the remainder of the team in any way which aids understanding.
Design
Following the Discovery and Ideas phase, it should be clear to all exactly what the product should look like and most importantly, how it must function. The design phase is where we actually develop the solution to your problem. A key element to this phase is physical prototyping as it is important to use these models to understand the look and feel of different elements of the design before building the full solution. This ultimately saves both time and money and generally leads to a better product.
We aim to get the prototypes into the hands of as many of your users as possible as this helps with the review and ultimately the refinement of a design through feedback among other things.
Testing and Delivery
By this stage there should now be a fully working prototype. The next step is to expose it to viewers and used by as many people as possible. Once the design team has iterated the product to the point it is functional, it will be tested in-house before undergoing user testing.
Depending on the product, this can range from structured trails to simply taking the product to a local coffee shop and asking members of the public to try the product in return for a free coffee.
Once fully reviewed and tested, it is time to hand the product back over to you for manufacture.
