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In 2015, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office processed 629,647 patent applications. On average, approximately 55 percent of applications submitted receive patents. One way to improve your odds of getting a patent grant is to build your first prototype. While submitting a prototype is not strictly required by the U.S. Patent Office for submitting your application, it does serve to demonstrate that your idea has been thought through in sufficient detail to merit consideration. Here are four steps to get your first prototype built so you can turn your idea into a patented, profitable product. 1. Create a Concept SketchThe first step toward turning your idea into reality is getting it down on paper. Draw your idea to help you visualize your prototype in greater detail. While it is possible to use a digital drawing program for this step, it may be more efficient to start on paper first. For one thing, in the early stages of creating your prototype, you’ll have a lot of ideas running through your mind and competing with each other. You’ll save time by drawing these rapidly on paper instead of investing time perfecting a digital drawing. Keep a sketch notebook to provide documentation that can be used when submitting your patent. It also may come in handy if you ever need to defend your ownership of your intellectual property. Sketches drawn by hand can carry more weight in court than electronically generated drawings, says intellectual property adviser CreateIP. 2. Develop a Virtual PrototypeAt some point it’s going to be invaluable to create a digital sketch of your idea. A standard digital design tool used by engineers and other professionals is AutoCAD, which enables them to make both 2-D and 3-D renderings. A 3-D rendering lets you rotate and animate your virtual sketch, so you can visualize it from all angles. Tools such as NVIDIA Iray, CATIA Live Rendering and Quadro can further enable you to transform your 3-D drawing into a photorealistic prototype, helping you see approximately how a physical version of your design will look. If you’re not skilled with computer drawing and rendering tools, professional graphic designers or prototype designers can assist you with this step. 3. Build a Physical PrototypeOnce you have a virtual prototype, you’re ready to build a physical prototype. If you have the skill, you can build one yourself. If you need help, there are several types of resources you can tap to get this step done. One way is going to a professional prototype designer. An alternative is getting a designer or engineer to build your prototype. If you’re cash-strapped, you might seek out a handyman or advertise at an industrial design college. Once your first prototype is built, you may find flaws that need to be corrected before you seek a patent. You may need to build several prototypes to get a good one done. Typically, early working prototypes are built of less expensive materials than later versions to save money while fixing design flaws. As you improve your design, you can eventually make a prototype that replicates your actual product as it will be sold to consumers. 4. Locate a ManufacturerOnce you have a working prototype, you’re technically ready to apply for a patent; however, you might want to take the additional step of locating a manufacturer that can produce your product at a profitable price. If your idea is going to be profitable, you need to be able to build it at a cost that is low enough that you can cover expenses without cutting too far into your revenue. Manufacturers that offer free samples and 3-D printing can help you cut costs both in testing and production phases. For instance, manufacturerApple Rubber provides customized o-ring samples to help you test your prototype and determine how to produce it at a cost-efficient price. Go to multiple suppliers and manufacturers to get estimates, so you can determine the most cost-efficient materials and methods for putting your prototype into production.
 Prototyping is an important stage in the product design and development process. If you want your product to be a success, then you need to prototype it. So, what is prototyping? A prototype is a simple model of a proposed idea or solution. It is used to test or validate ideas so that refinements can be made. They can range from simple sketches, storyboards, or paper models, to a sophisticated model that closely resembles the product. They can be quick and rough, or fully formed and detailed. Prototyping can be used at any stage of the design thinking process, from ideation and experimentation to testing. There are many benefits to prototyping your product. Through prototyping, you can:
Wondering how to make a prototype for your product? Read on. The Prototyping ProcessCreating prototypes can be easy. Here’s a few basic steps to get you started:
Now that you know a little more about prototyping, it’s time to get started! Follow our tips to make your prototype a success. Looking to get your product prototyped?At Dienamics, we have over 30 years of experience in industrial design, tool making and manufacturing in Brisbane. We offer specialised prototyping services to help you take your concept from an idea to a reality. If you think prototyping will help you to develop your product, then give us a call. Talk to our expert team today. Prototyping is an extremely crucial stage in any design or development process. Prototyping also counts as an important phase in almost every flavor of the design thinking processes that I have come across — be it the original IDEO design thinking concept, the Stanford d.school 5D process, or Prof. Jeanne Leidtkas design thinking phases among the plethora of other flavors. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a prototype is worth a thousand meetings — IDEO A prototype is an idea made tangible. It can be anything from a quick sticky-note sketch to a functioning application. Each is a method for experimentation and a means of communication. Through prototyping, we can turn our ideas into great experiences that aim to address the needs and the problems that our team or our target audience face. A prototype is a simple experimental model of a proposed solution used to test or validate ideas, design assumptions and other aspects of its conceptualization quickly and cheaply, so that the designer/s involved can make appropriate refinements or possible changes in direction. Prototypes pan beyond words to something that the users (target group, team members, people involved in the process) can experience. They can help us elaborate the story of our ideas, and help us answer questions early, gain feedback, instill confidence and reduce associated risks and long term costs in some cases. With prototypes, the main goal is to “fail early to succeed sooner”. Leveraging prototypes to garner early feedback whilst in process, allows us to make inexpensive mistakes rather than finding out something isn’t working once we have reached too far down the road, and correcting the said issue would be either too complicated and would come with relatively high associated costs. I have broken the Prototyping process down into 6 phases as per my experience, following is a quick snapshot of the process as well as a detailed explanation of each phase - Identify the right problem or set of pain-points that we envision to solve. Identify our target group, get their core needs in focus. This would form the foundation of our prototyping exercise. The ideas, action points, features/functionalities and core need would all revolve around this aspect i.e. the Problem in focus. Discover what may be the real set of needs here. List down, the right set of questions that we must ask the stakeholders in need to elicit the required information. This could be done through ideation sessions, discovery workshops, brainstorming, with the target focus groups. Understand the problem and generate initial concepts. Create and build proof of concepts of our ideas quickly and cheaply to help realize these ideas as well as test them out with the target group. These could range from low fidelity prototypes hand sketched sticky notes, sketches on paper napkins, mockups, wireframes, cardboard models, etc. all the way up to something high fidelity like a prototype mobile application or a website or a partially functioning real world 3D printed models. Craft a well stitched story around the prototype to create an atmosphere for the target group. The story must include the impeding points or the needs of the users, illustrate how the prototype aims to solve these problems and yet highlight the fact that this will not in principle be the final solution, but would act as a step towards it. It is now time to test these ideas with the focus group. Note down the pros and the cons, note down what they liked and disliked about the current prototype. A key point to note in this stage is if the prototype does or does not address their inherent need partially or totally. Now that we have tested and noted down our next set of action items; It is also necessary for us to understand what is the greater outcome of our iteration or our entire exercise as a whole. These would help us include these experiential learnings into our future set of exercises. To conclude we could use the essence of prototyping in almost everything we work on, be it design, development, learning through mistakes. We must just identify the problem, innovate, create and learn. If you liked this article and would like to learn more on the basics of Design Thinking and how it can be used to solve problems read here. Images and Illustrations Credits — Unsplash; Humaans; & Me (Gaurav Menon) |
What is the first step in the prototyping process?
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