I was very honored to join Dave Harding from Eleven, Jamie Reed from Mass Art and Red Fish and Managing Partner Tucker Marion this week as panelists discussing Entrepreneurship and Design and their impact on innovation.  This panel discussion was part of the Northeastern EntreTech Forum series.  We talked from both the entrepreneurs and designers perspective and fielded questions from the audience. Here are some thoughts and highlights from the discussion:

This past week Flashpoint Development had the privilege to witness industrial designers inventions as a panelist reviewing student projects at MassArt’s School of Industrial Design. We were joined by Staple’s head of design and the department chair of Industrial Design at Mass Art. This Staples co-sponsored event focused on the “worker of the future”.

The first area of design, done by the Sophomores focused on thematic words like aggressive or organic. These produced emotional designs like a spiny teapot and a bulbous tea cup. On a separate assignment these same students were asked to develop new uses for plastic bottles which resulted in LED lamps, radio containers and lots of other solutions.

The juniors took on a brand like John Deere and looked to extend their brand, utilizing their “brand language”, into un-served markets. One of the more powerful concepts was a line of gardening supplies for ‘Jane Deere’ marketed towards females.

The seniors were given a broad opportunity statement, one of which was to use a wearable and portable device to tell time (can’t be a watch). Students developed a Twitter based watch and a graphic based time device (sun rising, moon rising).

A different senior project focused on the “worker of the future” which carefully analyzed how teenagers communicate and feel about technology. Results included mobile offices with kiosks that printed.

Any of these concepts could become the basis for a start-up venture. These designers were taught to examine market needs, usability issues, economics and line extensions. Designers bring a lot to product development team, much more than making devices appealing. Their business, product and design background provides a diverse skill set that can be helpful in any product endeavor.

The Stack Master development story continues with Industrial Design, Product Design, Virtual Testing, Prototyping, Prototype Testing and Prototype Redesigns (we like to call them enhancements). If you are new to the story, check out our past posts:

Development Project Introduction

New Product Research

Feasibility Analysis, Customer Needs and Design Tools

You will be caught up quickly and enjoy this post.

Industrial Design

The preliminary design was based off our competive and market needs, customer needs, and our designer’s creativity.  After presenting the concepts to the CEO of PaperPro, we decided on a product direction.  We created several variations of the direction and the Uber Fusion Curves won overall.

Product Design & Virtual Testing

We identified the critical components of the technology that needed to be designed them in Solidworks.

We knew that we had to scale up the power spring (to 100 pages) without requiring too much more force.  But how much?  Well COSMOS answered that question through our virtual testing.  We created a graph based on those results showing the relationship between thickening the spring and the force of the spring.

Prototyping

With a good understanding of the product design and an updated CAD virtual prototype we sent The Stack Master off to China to be prototyped.  We used clear stereo lithography, a common practice because it allows you to see into the prototype and observe the mechanism working.

Prototype Testing

Testing the Stack Master prototype was quick, informative and effective.  The striker (part that shoots the staple) and other plastic parts needed to be metal didn’t last long, so we commissioned those parts to be made by CNC machining.  This lead to more testing, but it wasn’t long before we had a decent list of required enhancements.

The enhancements should be organized to maximize an effective solution to the cause of the issue. A format that we use is

1. Part, organize the changes by major part
2. Issue, what went wrong?
3. Cause, why did it go wrong?
4. Resolution, how are we going to fix it?

Sometimes it is easier to answer questions three and four with a graphical illustration.  An example of the visualization that we used is:

Once we had a good idea of the issues and ways to improve the prototype, we began the engineering changes.

More to come on our Prototype as we prepare for production and market launch.