Member Articles Member Articles Aha! The Light Bulb Spark! Inventing and your Product Design | Aha! The Light Bulb Spark! Inventing and your Product Design |
| Written by Brian Gates | |
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Inventing, many would say, is a game of "luck" finding that one simple idea and running with it. Some inventions are proprietary knowledge, such as intellectual property allowing you to build a software empire, or holding the patent rights on a new type of industrial machine, but many successful inventions are created primarily by improving existing products. With such a large global marketplace, many researched and produced consumer goods are already available to satisfy the basic function of the product. However, this does not mean that it cannot be improved and create even more benefits to consumers beyond its basic function.
Where do you start? Many resources are available to the first time inventor (including Idea Tango), giving detailed step-by-step instructions, but we want to instead focus on your invention’s actual product design. This is done by research: finding existing products and competitors, laying out and researching the feasibility of your product and defining your design criteria. Existing Products - It is highly important to examine products already in existence, as well as see who your competitors are and what they provide. Frequently you will be surprised that your invention has already been "thought up," even pateneted, whether or not it has had any market success. We have also been shocked when from time to time we receive multiple design requests for the same product all within the space of a month and from different inventors. Previous and existing product research is very important, and our resources page has some starter links to get you going. Product Benefits - From here, you need to narrow down your product design to evaluate its benefits and feasibility. Take our own example of Corg, our cord management device. Corg - The idea? Cordage! Massive amounts of tangled cords piled behind desks and around corners. This is a problem within homes, offices and businesses. We wanted to find a solution to this, and our first step was to find out what existing products were available. We found them generally unsatisfactory in several aspects.
Research - We found clips that snap together, zip ties which cannot be easily accessed, a few organizers which twist cords around a center piece (which is damaging to electrical signals in the long term) and the terrible "tube" designs which necessitate the user to feed every individual cable through the device, making the cords hard to reaccess. None of these existing products would suit the purpose we had in mind to effectively and simply manage cords. Design Criteria - We have envisioned redesigning a cord management device, we know many of our current competitor’s products: their benfits, and prices, and now we can define what we want our own invention idea to include. Corg’s Design Criteria
We wanted all of these criteria points to be included in Corg's final product design. This would help set our invention apart from the competition. Next - Look soon for a new article detailing how to weigh the feasibility of your design criteria, compare this to your competition and push your product design to the next level.                     |
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