Climate change, AI and supply chain disruption among trends to heavily influence product design in the years ahead. Feature Article: Design & Engineering Magazine, Winter 2022 - By Kevin Bailey If there’s one thing we’ve learned from 2020 and 2021 it is that 2 years of unpredictability has changed how we live, work and purchase goods and services. Changes in climate, fears of inflation, global supply chain effects on availability, and a shift in the types and purchasing methods of goods and services consumers want were all contributing factors. The […]

88 Product Design Terms You Need to Know If you are designing a new product, working with a product design firm or have an interest in hardware startups - knowing your way around product design terminology is critical. For example, exploding a  BOM - may come as shock to those who don't know BOM stands for bill of materials, and exploding it simply means showing a list of all the components in one view! But a quick read of the most frequently used product design related terms below will bring […]

Looking back 10 years, electronics were essentially there own product category, now more so that Now more so than every eletronics are being integrated into more and more products. For companies exisitng companies looking to venture into this product cateogry and new startups looking to build this product it can poses challenages. Especially when firms look for outside help with their product design. For example, this could ha 10 years ago product cateogry all on theire ow now integrated into everything for example, a fridge has to be more than […]

"Design 1st sees trust as the main ingredient in product development" -  Ottawa Business Journal The main ingredient to successful product development isn’t silicon, its trust. There are common practice rules of invention and a real requirement for trust between a product development team and the ideas person when creating and developing new inventions to bring to the market. The process starts with a great idea.  In the case of Design 1st client Standard Innovation, a careful process was followed between the Design 1st product development team and the inventor […]

Take a moment and think back to the last time you had to machine an impeller from a solid metal cylinder. Was it this morning? Perhaps it was a few weeks or months ago? For most of us, the occasion has never really come up (or just that one time in University when you said you’d try anything once). Whatever the case, I’m willing to bet that it eventually required a 5-axis milling machine.. Of course, the best way to use such a machine is a complicated matter.

In order to create a successful product, which factor is the most important: that it functions well, that it appeals to the user, or that it reaches its target market? Each factor is necessary, and this intersection of mechanical engineering, industrial design and business has led to MIT creating a new Master’s program: Integrated Design & Management.