{"id":15153,"date":"2019-10-08T08:50:34","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T14:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/?p=15153"},"modified":"2023-09-18T07:18:43","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T13:18:43","slug":"mistakes-to-avoid-if-youre-a-product-design-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cadcrowd.com\/blog\/mistakes-to-avoid-if-youre-a-product-design-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Mistakes to Avoid When Working with Product Design Service Firms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The road to bad product design is littered with good intentions. As much as good design is key to a successful product, bad design can be the death knell of even a great initial idea.<\/p>

Lessons can be learned from products that have failed in the past. It\u2019s usually much easier and cheaper than learning from your own product failure. A killer idea can be killed by poor design, a lack of foresight, and too much ambition without enough market knowledge.<\/p>

Here, we\u2019re going to look at some key principles to follow with when working with a product design service<\/a> to create a new product and check out some examples when companies didn\u2019t listen to them. Some surprising big hitters make it into the curriculum of how to avoid product failure. Read on and see which ones you recognize.<\/p>

Solve a Problem<\/h2>
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Slim Avocado Slicer<\/a> industrial design project by Supra77<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

This is one of the basic ideas when it comes to designing something that you want people to spend their hard-earned money on. It seems pretty obvious to say, but you actually need to have a reason for consumers to buy what you\u2019re selling.<\/p>

There\u2019s a very limited market for useless but pretty things. If you\u2019re not actually going to be making things easier or adding value to someone\u2019s life, is it really worth their hard-earned money?<\/p>

Furthermore, if someone has already solved a particular problem, then your product should find other ways to improve. Mobile phones had been around for a long time before Apple entered the market, but they did it better<\/em> than everyone else on the market at the time.<\/p>

No one likes a copycat. Unless you can completely disrupt an industry by doing things better, you need to make sure that you\u2019re doing things that are innovative. So, defining a problem for you to solve is really one of the most important steps of the product design process.<\/p>

\"Xiaomi-Copies-iPhone\"<\/figure>

Who Got This One Wrong?<\/h3>

Did you own a Zune? Nope? Neither did we, nor many other people at all.<\/p>

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\"microsoft-zune-product\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>

Microsoft decided to enter the MP3 player market very late. Digital music players launched in 1997 and were quick to gain popularity when the iPod was launched in 2001. Apple\u2019s product did things better \u2013 the full product design was simple and effective, putting music on to your device wasn\u2019t scary and technical.<\/p>

A whole five years later, Microsoft launched their MP3 player, Zune. It brought nothing new to the party. There were no advances made, no new technology, nothing innovative about how it looked.<\/p>

At a time when around 77% of portable digital music players were made by Apple, the Zune gave no one a compelling reason to jump ship. There wasn\u2019t a problem for it to solve, so no one wanted to buy one.<\/p>

Know Your Market<\/h2>
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The Stretchair<\/a> is a product designed by MatteRealize<\/a> to help those who care for disabled patients.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

When coming up with a concept for your new product or design project, ask yourself: who is going to be buying it? Sometimes this is going to be very specific, like parents of children aged two-to-three years old, or it could be extremely broad, like environmentally conscious consumers.<\/p>

Whoever you\u2019re aiming your product at, you need to make sure that you\u2019re going to be meeting their needs, and importantly, their expectations. For example, if your target audience is the 60+ demographic, then having fiddly buttons and a complicated app that requires decent tech skills probably isn\u2019t going to go down well.<\/p>

Researching who is going to buy your product is key. Once your designer or design engineering service<\/a> has got your idea on paper or rendered as a 3D model, take that out to your potential market. If you\u2019re a 40-year old man aiming to sell to middle-aged women, you better get their direct feedback before you get too far in your product development.<\/p>

What Companies Made This Mistake?<\/h3>

You can ask your customers as many questions as you want. The key is to actually listen to them.<\/p>

The Ford Edsel was a mega flop for the company. They had spent a lot of time and money asking consumers what they wanted, and they roundly ignored the advice.<\/p>

\"Ford-Edsel-Product-Failure\"<\/figure>

Customers told Ford they wanted something small and economical. The car was big and clunky and had poor fuel economy. When a company so blatantly ignores the wishes of their customers, they deserve to fail, and fail the Edsel did.<\/p>

In a similar vein, the Google Glass pleased no one. The first people that are going to take on a high-end, high-spec, high-tech product are the technology geeks. They\u2019re the ones who are going to play with it and find uses for it, build the apps for it.<\/p>

These are also people who tend to understand and care the most about privacy and security. These were just two of the key features missing from Google\u2019s ill-fated foray into wearables. By not really getting what their early adopters would look for in their new tech, they guaranteed that no one would want to buy one.<\/p>

Offer a Great User Experience<\/h2>
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A dynamite-style fire extinguisher<\/a> by product design engineer ZaaminR<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Solve all of the problems in the world, but if users can\u2019t actually make your product work, then it\u2019s not getting bought.<\/p>

One of the keys to modern design is to make your product intuitive. It should feel natural to use, not overly complicated, cumbersome, or taxing to get working for you.<\/p>

The user experience is where the form and function of your product are going to collide. What\u2019s the point of your new kitchen gadget looking beautiful but having a load of knobs to twist and buttons to push just to chop a carrot? Similarly, you can have the world\u2019s most efficient domestic windmill, but if it\u2019s clunky, no one is installing it.<\/p>

The user experience is only going to be understood when you start to develop a prototype. What may look like an obvious button to press to make things get moving could get completely lost on users when you start testing a model you\u2019ve had built.<\/p>

Lots of products need add-ons to make them work\u2014think apps for smartphones or coffee pods for home coffee machines. Asking someone to buy your gadget and then having nothing to use it with is also not a great experience.<\/p>

Make sure you\u2019re testing your product outside of the people who have been involved in its development. The people who have had ideas bounced off them, your family who know exactly what your new product is\u2014of course, your prototype will be intuitive to them. Find some willing strangers to play with your concept design<\/a> without instruction and see how quickly they get it and how much they like using it.<\/p>

Which Big Ideas Missed the Mark on This?<\/h3>

3D and even 4D movies were heavily invested in, but how many people do you know who own a 3D TV?<\/p>

The pitfalls of 3D movies are well known:<\/p>