About 70 campers showed up today at the offices of OATV for Hardware Summer Camp, organized by Nick Pinkston, Renee DiResta and Adam Ellsworth. I kicked off the Saturday session with a short talk, remarking that the maker movement has been built around a prototyping revolution more than a manufacturing revolution. One can see that changes in manufacturing are coming but what has become easier is the building of prototypes.
Even though prototyping is easier, both Glenn Reid, a Bay Area product designer and founder of Inventor Labs, and Ben Einstein of Bolt, which is located in Boston, emphasized that you should ask yourself why you are building a prototype and what you expect to get out of it. Here are some of their thoughts based on my notes.
Glenn said there were four reasons to build a prototype:
- To convey your idea — a product concept
- To see if an idea will actually work — functional prototype
- To explore industrial/product designs — model
- To explore or simulate manufacturability – true prototype for pre-manufacturing research.
Ben said that you might create a prototype to explore or learn more about the market, the design of a product or how that product might be manufactured. You might be trying to understand materials, fidelity and process.
Both Glenn Reid and Ben Einstein cautioned that building a prototype could be a waste of time, although you might think it’s cool to do so. It can also be a waste of money if a digital prototype is sufficient or if the work you’re doing doesn’t actually relate to how the product will be manufactured. Ben says he loves to build things and that he doesn’t understand a product unless he can hold it in his hands.
Ben’s categories for prototypes were:
- POC — Proof of Concept
- Looks like/Works Like — verification of idea
- DFM/DFA — design for manufacturability/assembly
- Functional — final
One might think of each prototype as an experiment, and one should think about what you expect to learn from the experiment. One should also stop experimenting when there’s no more to learn from yet another prototype. I might summarize the advice as: “Think Before You Prototype.”
4 thoughts on “Reasons to Build a Prototype”
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Prototyping has its place and time. Currently I am busy designing an Arduino CNC shield. The prototype PCB’s take about 2 weeks to complete and every change after that takes another 2 weeks. I think its worth going through the process as long as you keep on learning from it.
I found that some ideas need evolution to progress. For that same reason I have about 3+ PCB designs going on at the same time. As we receive the prototypes back we do beta testing and make the needed modifications before going through the cycle again. Having a week in between sending off prototypes also gives you plenty of brain storming time.
Then as one design gets finalized we add the next design on our to-do list.
Being a manufacturer is totally different from being a weekend maker.
In the end I think as long as you’re having fun you are in the right path… ;)
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