We do not lock you into R&D projects by requiring a fixed price.
For the design phase, you can pay block by block, for example starting with a number of hours of industrial design work, seeing what we provide, and then, once you're satisfied, paying for the following block of work, and so on.
Paying step-by-step or paying a fixed amount per week during the feasibility and early prototyping phases is usually the best approach for our clients as there is a lot of 'discovery' to be done at this stage.
Here are 2 reasons why paying for work in blocks and proceeding one step at a time is appropriate at this early stage of your project:
The cost of the materials needed for the prototypes is not known at this stage
The scope might change – this is very common, as the designs or the components we suggest might give you some new ideas. A new scope comes with a different workload.
At any point, as long as you have paid for everything we have done and all the expenses we have incurred (and that you know of) you can decide to stop the project, and the intellectual property of our work belongs to you alone as specified in our contract.