Design Thinking for Startups
Tags: Startup, Design Thinking, Product Development, Tips And Tricks, Product Design

Okay, we all know about “BHAPs” — Big Hairy Audacious Problems — but I think we could all afford to be more up on “BHEPs” — Big Hairy Embarrassing Problems! Here’s a perfect example of a BHEP: 85% of Startups fail within their first three years, and this is within the U.S., one of the most innovative and opportunity-rich countries in the world! Why is this the case?

To address this question, we want to bring in some of the missing links that contribute to a strong startup community and also help decrease this high rate of failure; missing links that come from the design studio perspective. At Sundberg-Ferar here in Detroit, we work very closely with our local startup community, and it’s this perspective that lets us see first-hand some common problems that we’ll try to address here.

1. Undercapitalization for Startup Product Design & Development

The number one problem that causes this embarrassingly high rate of failure is still undercapitalization. While an independent industrial design studio like us can’t help directly with that, we can always help connect you with some VCs, incubators, or accelerators who might help you this way. Budget is always a concern, but there are still creative ways to stretch your dollar, and that’s where we can help in finding a feasible way to work with your team.

2. Misunderstanding Design Thinking & Product Design for Startups

This second big problem is product design itself, which we’ll be tackling it in this article.

But before that, I just want to give you some background on where we’re coming from in our thinking here at Sundberg-Ferar. Our studio has been working with big and small companies alike across categories since 1934. Not only do we design objects for many different types of companies, our work across categories also allows us to cross-pollinate and cross-reference the patterns in human behavior, the trends we see, and the ideas we see emerging between categories. We bring all this cross-category insight to bear on the designs we create for you. We also design products in all levels of innovation from incremental innovations to radical innovations — and again, we do this for big companies and small companies too. Just because you’re a startup doesn’t mean your product can’t be a radical innovation. Many of the disruptive products we’re seeing in the world today are actually from startups! Learn more about Sundberg-Ferar and our philosophy.

1. What is Industrial Design?

Now, it could be that some of you haven’t been introduced to the definition of Industrial Design yet. Yes, if you’ve heard that we make things beautiful, it’s true. Whether in mobility or a consumer product or a component, it always ends up being beautiful when we work on it. However, we actually start with solving the right problem beautifully. The beauty is always part of it, but it’s really a natural result of the human-centric process of designing a product which looks first at the ease of use, ergonomics of use, usability, efficacy and layering all those aspects of the product together. We’ve talked a lot about the unique role of “beauty” in industrial design in this other article (Beauty : The Beast in Industrial Design) which you can take a look at. Design is not just styling. Styling is a component of design.

Let’s look at the general landscape of how an industrial design studio, like us, looks at things. Check out the image above. On the right side of this spectrum, you have aspects of the process like designing, engineering, model-making, prototyping and all the steps that “make it happen” for your product. On the left side of the spectrum, though, you see how we start. No matter what, we always begin with understanding the primary need to solve and understanding the business plan in yours or your team’s mind.

2. Pitfalls to avoid in getting from Idea to Product

Now, back to the topic at hand: Design Thinking. No matter what, as a startup, you start with an idea. Then over a couple of years (give or take) you become established. Then, if all goes well, you’ll most likely go into vertical expansion and create a portfolio of products — because profit is made at the portfolio level, not just from a single product. That’s a natural progression of maturing as a company. Then you’ll grow into adjacent categories as you engage your evolving ecosystem and the peripheral, analogous aspects of your products.

Any big company you can think of, Lego, Apple, Carhart, Yeti and beyond — as successful and huge as they are today — all started in the small business or startup world with nothing but some strong values and ideals and an idea to bring them to life.

Understanding the Method to the Madness: That’s why we do what we do in product development right? We have an idea and we want to use it to solve problems for the world! However, you just have to understand that there is a very deliberate and rigorous cadence to the process of getting from idea to product. There’s a series of stepping stones that will get you there, but you have to trust the process:

First, there’s the idea that you start with. It could be just yours, or it could be a father/son team or a husband/wife team. Second, you have to prove it out and get the idea out of your head and onto the paper. If it’s going to finally be used in the world of 3D, you have to get it into a 3D manifestation or proof-of-concept and actually get it in from of people — friends, family or partners. Now’s the part where money really comes into it — the elephant in the room that we have to deal with sooner or later. That money might come from a kick-starter campaign or grants from your local incubator or small business association. Then you finally get into stage B, C and beyond. The main thing is understanding how to think about this process to get from idea to product.

Know where you are in the process: Very often we see a startup who, practically, is still on the left side of the spectrum that we looked at, so they’re very early in the process, yet they’re already spending time thinking about all the details of the production stage! Yes, it’s nice to have all that figured out, but it doesn’t help your thinking when your idea is still early in the process. In fact, it stymies your thinking because you’re already discounting possibilities and avenues for your idea based on manufacturing feasibility alone. You definitely have to think about design for manufacturing, but that comes later in the process. If you think that way at the beginning, you’re throwing out possibilities that are full of potential. There will be inevitable feasibility issues to tackle and bridges to cross, but let’s keep those extremely production-oriented considerations like rib thickness, draft angles, or sink marks in that later stage where they belong.

3. Not Minimum-Viable-Product but Minimum-Viable-Experience

Before that comes the conceptual stage where you’re still presenting your idea to family, friend, or investors. Again, in the conceptual stage, all the issues just mentioned don’t need to be solved yet. You can simply have a look-alike or work-alike model that can still be presented at an investment convention or local competition. Your product or idea doesn’t have to be designed for economies of scale at that point.

But even before that, the first thing to look at is not even creating your MVP (minimum viable product). Even the idea of MVP includes the idea of the product, and limits your thinking to physical features and functionality. What you should really be focusing on first is your MVE, the Minimum Viable Experience!

You shouldn’t think of just selling a product — if you are, you might already be losing the game. If you really want to get at the experiential, aspirational, emotional needs, pain points, and desires of users in a given ecosystem, you should be asking yourself what would be that Minimum Viable Experience. Demonstrating the MVE can be done simply using low-fidelity models, storyboards, simulations, or enacting. No matter what, you have to understand how to start developing your idea instead of immediately getting hampered in your thinking because you talked to a supplier and they said you need to order a minimum volume of 150,000 products, or some other barrier. Tackling those kinds of hurdles in the first stages will stop anyone in their tracks! You absolutely still need to have a flavor of the production processes, but that shouldn’t pigeon-hole your thinking and creativity in developing your idea and the MVE.

4. Get Guidance

Take a look at this image. Right in the center is you and your idea, and then you have to start evolving your idea and get the confidence of your family and friends. I say this because no matter what, you have to put some of your own skin and money in the game, and your friends and family can often be an asset in that area, and they can also make a buck off of you in return. Then you start presenting your product to investors and get funding. Next you can get into soft tooling and batch production. Finally you can manufacture the product at scale. So there is a rhythm and cadence to when you start bringing the more detailed miniscule elements into your idea in the product development process.

This is also how an Industrial Design studio, like Sundberg-Ferar or any other good design studio, would help in working with you and guiding you through that cadence and journey from idea to manufacturable product. It’s nice to have that end vision and expansive idea of your idea and what you want your product experience to be, but you also have to have a way to reach back into the present and know what can be done in the next 3-month span to get your product to the next level given your current timeline and budget.

5. Love Your Vision More than Your Product.

The next thing we need to talk about may seem obvious: Everyone is in love with their product. Of course they are. That’s what makes them passionate about it, and as a startup, that passion is great to have. In fact, you need it! Look at Shark Tank for example. In order to pitch a great product, you have to believe in it and have that passion! BUT. While it’s nice to have your product, or “your baby”, keep in mind that “there is only one beautiful baby in the world, and every mother has it”. It’s the same with products, and as an industrial design studio, we try to help our clients realize this. Every inventor has a product that’s his/her baby, and often they just can’t let go. We are not saying that you have to let it go. But we would encourage you to park it in your “idea parking lot” for a minute, and together we can go do some basic collective-wisdom-based design research, and get other ideas so that you have a group of 5 or 6 ideas in the parking lot. Then you can take the subjectivity away and create an emotional scorecard — (we’ll talk more about that later) — to vet all the ideas, and determine which one should go forward. We also talk more about design research for startups in this article: Startup Success Hinges on Design Research.

More than just loving your product, you have to love your overall vision, which includes your business model and your own reason for existence. For example, apart from just making money, what is your uniqueness? What is the compelling part of what you do that will make people go out of their way or change their behavior patterns to buy and experience your product? You have to love your business plan and you have to love the end experiential problem you’re solving. The actual definition of the product or its architecture or embodiment can change.

Sometimes when we’re talking to startups, they invoke the famous quote by Charles Eames, “Design is in the details.” Yes. That’s absolutely true. But before you get into the details, make sure your fundamental product architecture is good. It’s not just about using the right materials and textures and packaging. Apple’s packaging is amazing, but they succeed because their product is good. Focus on the primary needs you’re trying to solve and then build the details around it. Too often, startups focus on solving for one tiny corner of the entire picture. You do need to solve those details, but there’s a rhyme and reason to when you address them.

Understanding this “emotional mountain” below is as applicable for big enterprise companies as it is for small companies and startups. As humans, we all want ideal experiences, and we buy products because we believe they offer an emotional or experiential benefit to us. That ideal experience gets broken down into the attributes, features and technology of a product. The way that is done in a product can always change. That’s where an Industrial Design studio might help in showing you a better configuration or arrangement for your product and its attributes. The top part of the mountain; the experience you’re going after; that won’t change. That’s your baby and your vision. That’s your MVE and that’s what carries the love you want to spread. We want to help you achieve that. But the mechanism for delivering that vision in a product might change in the course of the development process. That’s where understanding the experiential problems you want to solve becomes the main element in your vision rather than the physical embodiment of your product. Just to be clear I’m using “physicality” as an example because it’s easy to understand, but it also translates for service design and other kinds of non-physical products. The point is: Love your vision, not the product.

6. Find your tribe that believes in your vision

Just as we know that no product can be designed in isolation, the same thing goes for partnerships. I mentioned involving family and friends earlier, but that’s not just from a financial perspective. It’s also always good to socialize your idea and what you want to accomplish with different parameters. For example, take a second and compare the difference in cultures between say, the Silicon Valley, and the Midwest Rust Belt area. It’s always good to socialize your idea in different cultural environments to see their reactions and how it’s perceived from their vantage point. They might shoot it down, or they might hand you a cheque, but the more partners you can get in the earlier stages, the better. Eventually, you’ll have to actually work with a supply chain, but right now you can at least talk about it with all the different parts of the creative supply chain to see what people think of your idea.

Maybe you’re thinking “how can I share my idea when I don’t have a patent or anything”? It’s a valid question, and there are ways to do this, but for now we’re going to save the IP discussion for another article. Yes, there’s always the issue of protecting yourself from the IP perspective, but it’s good to have your own groupies following you who believe in your idea and are ready to buy it when it comes out. This isn’t simply generating sympathy votes. You’re actually listening to and understanding the way these people are looking at it. “The designer is not the user”. Even though you most likely have experience in the same category as your idea — for example if you’re a sports coach you might be developing a training tool product — but you have to understand how to collect partners who believe in and can help inform that experience you’re trying to achieve.

7. Don’t start with an exit Strategy.

Sometimes, we have immersion sessions with startups, and they’re perfectly on target to solve the right problem in their ecosystem with a good product, but they’re already saying “I just want to get my product to a level where I can sell it off, or license it out”. There are all kinds of exit strategies which are good to understand, and which eventually have to be taken into account in your business plan. Later in my design career, I myself got my Executive MBA at Michigan State University, and they train us day in and day out in the business world to think about exit strategies. However, we encourage startups not to go into it with an exit strategy as their main motivation. You want to be in it to really solve a unique problem, or seek out a real opportunity that you believe in! It can’t be just to make a quick buck by selling to a VC. It has to be motivated by a passion to solve a real need that exists in our culture and ecosystem today.

8. Consider and Establish Your Emotional Score.

There are many kinds of scorecards that accelerators, incubators and design houses use to help guide startups. However, you shouldn’t live and die by only one scorecard. There are a million different ways we’ve seen startups evaluate their product, especially for getting grants — the technology score, the job-creation metrics of the product, how it makes use of local manufacturing companies — you name it!

However, there’s another kind of scorecard that our studio brings to the table: The Emotional Score. Remember the emotional mountain? These are the aspects that the Emotional Score looks at. For example, what’s the emotional aspirational experience your product delivers? How does it add joy to people’s lives?

Some products that score the highest on the Emotional scale aren’t even the smart or technologically complex products we see coming from many startups. Some of the most amazingly “emotionally smart” products are still analog! We hear the industries narrative over and over that products must include sensors, a battery, an app, or some kind of connectivity in order to be considered smart. Some accelerators are even creating grants for the poor startups who have products that don’t have some earth-shattering technology in them. No! If the product solves a problem in its category seamlessly and intuitively, that’s the score we should be using. We firmly believe that this emotional score is a good indicator of how your product will succeed in the market.

9. Stop Trying to be all things to all people. Be Something to Someone.

If you’re an energizer bunny like me, you probably start immediately thinking of all the problems your product can solve and you’ll try to solve it all with one universal product. Before you try to do that, take a pause. It’s important to realize that all of those problems you want to solve can also be solved by another product — maybe another one of yours, or someone else’s. You can not be all things to all people. If you do try to make a product that everyone loves, what you’ll end up with is just a product that nobody hates. Sometimes your MVE must be very focused, and you have to choose one category, one persona, and one goal to solve for. You have to be frugal, not going beyond what you’ve chosen to do — especially in the startup world where time and money are so vital.

However, once you occupy that ecosystem, then you can solve for more. Then you can create other products in the same ecosystem with the understanding of what pain points each one solves, and how all of them will work in tandem within an ecosystem. Start with one product, and then expand your portfolio in that category or even in adjacent categories eventually too.

10. Money

Another big issue that startups have to think about, and which we’ve already alluded to is cash. Yes, no matter what, you need some kind of cash investment to develop a product design. But keep the big picture in mind. Whatever investment you need to make a product design still pales in comparison with the cash needed for the manufacturing process, tooling, logistics & distribution, or retail and dealing with “the man”, Amazon. The entire roadmap represents a huge commitment. Often, we get startups coming to us saying concerning things like “I’m going to mortgage my house in order to pay for this prototype [or these design concepts]”. Sure, you can do that, and it might cover this stage, but what about all the stages that are still to come? We don’t want to just take your money and give you an amazing product, all the while knowing that there’s no financially feasible way for you to get the rest of the way to market and make a return on your investment. That’s why we love to work with startups who have at least a decent idea of a business plan that will carry them through this entire process (and not leave them destitute)! A startup needs to have an understanding of how their product will finally be used from the outset. Because, yes, we can make you an amazing product, but we also need to know what this product is worth to you, and how you’re going to use it to get to the next steps in your journey. If we know that your next step is to put your product on Kickstarter, or to bring it to a matchmaking event, or to pitch it to C-stage investors etc., we can work with you to make sure the product achieves that goal for you.

11. Product = Brand Promise

Finally, your product is going to be the most authentic “vessel” of your brand promise. The good news for you, as a startup is that you’re not already tied to some larger brand that you have to accommodate. You have the freedom to build a product and a promise from scratch. Today, selling based on brand name alone is no longer the authentic story. Your brand promise must be embodied in your product itself. In some ways, being a startup with a brand that’s unknown to the world at first is not a bad thing. Why? Because this way, it’s your product itself that will be the vanguard of your brand, demonstrate its benefits and build its name. You have a blank sheet to build on! Use it! You alone have the power to design and develop your authentic product; a product that delivers the ideal user experience where your passion lies!

Got questions, or want to talk with us about a project you’re working on?

Drop us a note at hello@sundbergferar.com !