Innovation 101 E4: Prototyping & Testing - Physical Products

You've got an idea, and you want

to see what people think of it.

You need to make a prototype

because you need to test that idea and see

if it's actually a good idea or if you

need to go back to the drawing board.

To make a physical prototype,

you need to start with a sketch.

You need to take that idea from your head

down into pencil and paper.

It doesn't matter if you can't draw.

I can't personally.

But you need to get that idea

out and onto something tangible.

Then you're ready to start making a 3D

model to make your physical prototype.

If you can't 3D model, that's actually

not really a problem these days.

You can find someone who can team up

with them and get a basic model out.

But don't spend too long on it because you

need to get to the next stage fast,

and that is making the actual prototype.

You can take a 3D model and convert it

into a file for 3D printing very easily,

leave it overnight, and come back to an

actual 3D print, which you can then test.

This is the most important part.

You need to test it quickly and thoroughly

and then go back and iterate on your

design and repeat this process

till you're happy with it.

But if you get further down the process

and find out you need to change something,

it's a lot more difficult.

So, don't be afraid of failure early on.

You want to test things as much as

possible and then iterate on that idea

till you're happy with it.

I'm an industrial designer,

and as an industrial designer,

we're very interested in testing

prototypes for a number

of different reasons.

I've got some examples here of how

we've run through a project.

This is a pair of glasses we designed,

and the first prototype is a low-quality

FDM print, which is

formed deposition modeling.

We've done this to check the physical

appearance and the scale of the design.

Once we're happy with that, we'll move to

an SLS. This is a selective laser sintering.

It's made of nylon.

In this instance,

people are actually wearing the glasses,

so we're interested in how they flex and

feel and how the lenses snap in and out.

It's more expensive, but a higher quality.

We then want to check some

of the mechanical function.

In this instance, we've gone to a SLA,

a resin process with SLS hinges,

and we're checking the tolerance

in between the parts and to make sure

that the mechanical functions right.

We've then moved to a low-quality

prototype tool where we've injected actual

polymers into the mold to check how

the material affects the design.

Finally, these are the final production

glasses, which is, again,

injection molded, but in a high-quality

production tool and brings all

the elements that were designed together.

Really, when you're testing a prototype,

you really want to test it to failure.

You want to know where your design or

idea doesn't work and not where it works.

Often, I'll see people test

a prototype and say, Isn't it great?

It does all these things,

but they're ignoring and the inherent

floor, which will bring you undone

if you don't expose it early.

In the boating scenario,

that's making a boat and testing it

until it fails,

working out how many people can you put

in it before it capsizes,

trying to drop test and break them.

For us, we build these things,

which are smart helmets.

We destroyed heaps of them.

These are made 3D printing and CNC

milling, and we just got them out there,

test the user interfaces,

and destroyed them.

Often, we miss the user

experience of our products.

A great way to get that out there is just

to give your product as a prototype

to lots of just regular people.

They'll give you honest feedback,

whether it all makes sense or not.

Often when you're beginning your idea,

you want to put all the greatest functions

into it, but it's really about

time and getting to market fast.

What you need to do is draw all

the functions and features that you have

in your product, put red lines through

the ones that don't have to be there

in the first one,

and make it finished, not perfect.

There's a first time for everything,

and we're still testing this series.

If you could leave some comments

and suggestions, it'd be really

helpful for us to improve the program..