How to save money when developing your idea…

Developing an idea until you reach a feasible and market ready product can often be an expensive and time-consuming process. Papa Bravo have curated a few helpful steps that you can take to minimise costs during the development process.

Before you approach a product design consultancy like Papa Bravo it’s a good idea to have a design brief.

A clear design brief outlines the description of the product and details the problem that you are tyring to solve. Clarity from the beginning will help to save time and therefore reduce costs so you don’t have to change or amend your design brief during the project.

Can you prove that the design works?

Prototype early, fail quickly but most importantly learn as much as you can. Prototyping your product idea is a great way to test whether your idea works in principle. The prototype doesn’t have to look great and the materials and colours may be different to the final product but proving out your idea and testing that it really works is a great validation step. Anybody you share your idea with at this stage will still have to sign an NDA to protect any IP further down the line.

It’s also a great idea to run a competitor search.

This is a great way to see if there are any products out there that already solve the problem. How are they doing it and who is their target market. Try to find out as much information about your competitors as possible. Try to find out who the end user is and what product(s) are available to them which target the problem. If you are looking to design a product which is going to improve an existing product category it may be worth speaking with some user groups of similar products to find out their experiences using the product. Remember you don’t have to tell them your idea but you can ask a series of general questions which may help you to validate your idea.

You don’t want to invest lot’s of time and money developing a product which doesn’t include really important, key features which are critical to the products success. Are you able to gain any insights which will enhance your product idea? Are there any features you can include which will help to increase the value of your product offering and provide an extra benefit to the user? Identifying these areas can often be a time-saving exercise which will in turn drive down costs.

The final step is to try and understand how your product will be made and work alongside a manufacturer as early as possible.

There may be a great chance to reduce the manufacturing complexity when it comes to producing your product or product components. Once you understand these manufacturing elements you’ll then be able to evaluate the process and remove any additional or unnecessary steps.