Whilst some say it is a re-gifted version of the old “Commercial Ready” and other grant systems axed by the Australian government in recent years, many product developers and innovators welcome the return of funding assistance to Australian industry.

Paraphrasing Andrew Spencer’s (from consulting firm GrantReady) interview with SmartCompany published on 14-1-2010, the new grant scheme provides funding for pre-commercialisation activities such as:

• Product development and design
• Testing and documentation development
• Tooling for production
• Set up of quality control / assurance systems
• Market validation
• Establishment of management teams
• Initiation of marketing and sales
• Execution of IP strategies

The Commercialisation Australia scheme is competitive and merit-based. Only compelling and thoroughly considered submissions are likely to receive funding support.

There are a range of eligibility criteria your organisation must (or plan to) meet in order to be awarded funding. These relate to your company’s non-tax exempt status, combined annual turnover, IP ownership, your internal funding capacity and various other workplace compliance requirements.

Successful submissions will address a range of key questions, including:

• Why do you need funding?
• What is your Commercialisation plan and what is its potential?
• What is the real market opportunity of your project?
• What is your management capability?
• How will this project provide national benefit to Australia?

Learn more about the Commercialisation Australia grant scheme here

Read full SmartCompany interview with Andrew Spencer (GrantReady) here

The premise is simple: Put yourself in the shoes of your product’s end-user, and identify new ways to make their experience of your product more enjoyable, convenient, faster and easier.

Achieving innovation doesn’t always require substantive user-studies and copious research and analysis… stumbling across one simple, innocent, spontaneous user insight or experience may be all you need for your next major product breakthrough.

Loads of ideas don’t always make one great product… but just one great idea might.

So the key is to be open to new, unexpected ideas. They could come from anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Successful HCD focuses on:

1. People participation (be they users, client groups, manufacturers, suppliers and other critical stakeholders)
2. Developing simple and robust human-centred guidelines that assist in idea-selection and decision making
3. Generating ideas rapidly and in volume
4. Creating (fast and inexpensive) idea mockups and testing them with real people to get real feedback
5. Iteratively refining, improving and detailing the best ideas until the one killer solution (that meets all your People, Technical and Business requirements) is ready for launch.

HCD is all about showing empathy for all who come into contact with your product – anywhere along its lifecycle. The more empathy you can show for your customers, users and stakeholders, the more successful your product will be.

But wait… what is Activity-Centred Design?

Conversely, there is a field of thought that believes that HCD is not all it is cracked up to be.

“Activity-centred Design” (ACD) is thought by some to be superior to HCD, because of a belief that technology does not adapt to people, but people (have and always do) adapt to technology.

Don Norman discusses ACD vs HCD in some depth.

My conclusion from reading Norman’s essay is that if one needs to “learn” how to use a product, then the amount of learning required is directly proportional to that product’s lack of human-centredness!

By way of example, the guitar could be considered a dreadful piece of HCD (if indeed any HCD approach was taken at all) – and yet it is one of the most played and popular musical instruments in history. Significant amounts of time and effort must be invested to learn and master the guitar.

On the other hand, ACD focuses on the design of the technology / object with the view to optimising the hierarchical activities, tasks, actions and operations to improve usability, intuitiveness and in the case of the guitar, playability.

If you ignore a fundamental driver of HCD, that is, if you assume that your customers, end-users and other stakeholders do not really know what they want (even though they think & say they do), you may be able to identify new and improved features and functionality that SHOULD be included in your product in order for it to deliver it’s primary goals and benefits.

I think there is a place for both HCD and ACD in modern product development. Products that have had no human-centred consideration (and thus may be considered poor designs) can certainly benefit from HCD techniques.

Adopting an ACD approach may help you better define, understand and optimise how your product is made, assembled and operated… because in the end, it is the outcome of a product’s function that a user usually looks for, not the product or function itself.

Analogy: You don’t buy a drill bit because you want a drill-bit… you buy a drill bit because you need a hole.

Resources and links:

• Wikipedia definition of User-centred Design (aka HCD): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design
• Don Norman on ACD vs HCD: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered.html
• Tom Kelley (IDEO) discussing HCD (it’s from 2002, but it’s got some interesting insights): http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_kelley_on_human_centered_design.html

If you missed the previous articles, find them here: Part 1 and Part 2

Idea # 3: Get some outside help (a.k.a. Outsource)

We can all have the blinkers on at times. Whether you have implemented Idea 1 or Idea 2 in this series or not, we can still get caught up in the boundaries, limitations and problems of our little worlds.

Whilst many of us are driven to do as much of the hard work ourselves and never contemplate paying someone else to do something we think we can do equally well, engaging some external help can often lift the lid on new opportunities, information and directions. A fresh pair of eyes, if you will!

Let’s face it… whilst we may have an appreciation for various disciplines like sales, marketing, design, intellectual property, manufacturing, distribution, quality, engineering and so on, there is no way we can do it all to a level that will be sustainable in the long term. We must get help.

Here are a few “vocation-specific” questions (in no particular order) that might help you determine what external assistance you need during your product development programs:

Industrial Design: “You’ve got a new product idea, but…”

• How will it look?
• How will it work?
• What will it be made of?
• How will it be made?
• How easy is it to use?
• How big should it be?
• How many do you need?

Graphic Design: “You’ve got a new product idea, but…”

• how do you want to communicate it to the world?
• what visual communications are required (within posters, flyers, brochures, websites, corporate & product identities, instruction manuals and packaging)?

Marketing: “You’ve got a new product idea, but…”

• What is your market?
• Who will buy it?
• Why should they buy it?
• What are the benefits your customers can expect from buying your product?
• What features should be included to deliver those benefits?
• How will you identify, disseminate and differentiate your products unique benefits, features and attributes?

Sales: “You’ve got a new product idea, but…”

• How much should it sell for?
• Who will sell it?
• How many do you need to sell?
• How much margin is there?
• Is this a high-value / low-volume product, or a low-value / high-volume product?

Intellectual Property (IP): “You’ve got a new product idea, but…”

• Has anyone else already done it?
• Is there a patent in place that you need to be aware of
• Does your product look (physically) like another product on the market?
• Does your logo or trademark resemble someone else’s?
• Have you done any research into similar existing inventions or “prior art” to determine if you are in fact “infringing”?
• Do you seek international IP protection for your new product, or just within specific regions / countries?
• Will you get a return on your investment in IP protection?

Prototyping: “You’ve got a new product idea, but…”

• Do you know it actually works?
• How can you mimic or test your idea physically?
• Have you created any mock-ups or rough samples that explain / test / validate your idea?
• Do you know if the material you’ve chosen for your product is correct?
• Have you tried using different materials, finishes, colours?
• Have you checked that this product idea can be comfortably / conveniently used by your end-user?

Manufacturing: “You’ve got a new product idea, but…”

• How many and by-when do you need them?
• What are your quality expectations?
• How easily can this product be assembled?
• How do you want it packaged?
• How many can fit on a pallet?
• Is there tooling required?
• What can you afford?

Although simplistic, these questions are indicative of the type of information your suppliers and outsourced partners will be looking for before and during the development program. Your role may be one (or more!) of the above, or you might assume the role of “project manager” – coordinating all these stakeholders to get the product developed.

When engaging external services and suppliers, it is vital that you have a clear understanding and agreement of what each other’s expectations and capabilities are. Communication and documentation are at the core of this understanding.

Thorough and comprehensive design briefs, product design specifications, RFQ (request-for-quote) documents, confidentiality agreements, variation agreements and manufacturing contracts all form the basis of your commercial relationship with your clients and suppliers, and ultimately maintain a transparent, clarified set of expectations for all to work within.

Your relationship with these outside parties will vary greatly – some you’ll simply pay a fee-for-service or fee-for-product (such as designers and manufacturers); others will require on-going fees and renewals (like some forms of IP protection). That said, there is nothing stopping you from discussing alternate financial arrangements that may help to share the risks and rewards of your project with your suppliers and professional service partners.

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Well, that wraps up this 3-part series on “Design = Change for the Better”. I’d love to hear your thoughts about how this information can / has helped you move closer to achieving innovation – and as always, if you’d like to discuss your specific project with me, please contact me.

Idea # 2: The Jameson Principle

When developing new products, it is easy to incorporate new features or functionality “because we can!”

Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

Thanks to Professor Tom Barker’s “Jameson Principle”, a great way to determine if your new product or idea is on the right track is to evaluate it against four simple criteria:

1.    Better?
2.    More?
3.    Cheaper?
4.    Wow?

Better products enhance the user experience; they help get a job done faster, easier, more efficiently; they may be better looking than the competition, or they may use more advanced materials or production processes that helps them achieve a higher quality feel or more reliable operation.

The “More” criteria helps you determine if your new product enables more people to have access to the benefits your new product provides… For instance, the first email ever sent probably required an advanced understanding of telecommunications, information technology and computer-programming to be able to create, send and decipher… however, as the benefits of email communications became more understood, software developers have continually tried to design email software to be increasingly “user friendly” in order for more people to use it.

Cheaper is self-explanatory… if you can make your new product cheaper, without sacrificing its quality, functionality and appearance – why wouldn’t you? To reduce cost, you might look at the materials, manufacturing processes or the actual design of the product (such as part count, complexity, assembly process). You might survey your customers to identify ways to simplify the design by excluding lesser used / wanted features or attributes. You may work closer with your production partners to see if they can provide cost-savings through more efficient processes, automation or outsourcing.

“Wow” and “wow-factor” are terms that I often detest (more on that another time), however I do acknowledge that they simply and conveniently wrap up a lot of what Innovation and Design is all about.

Providing “wow” within new products is the sizzle that comes with the sausage. Achieving the other 3 criteria (Better, More and Cheaper) can amount to nothing if your new product doesn’t have some kind of “x-factor” – that tangible or intangible “thing” that sets it apart from your competition; makes it more desirable; just simply screams “buy me!” You can achieve “wow” within your products aesthetically (use a curve when everyone else is straight), functionally (use a touchscreen when everyone else is using hard buttons); physically (X% lighter, smaller, stronger, more-durable etc); ergonomically (one-handed operation; comfort-grip; large graphics; easy-to-read); colour, finish and so on. Apple have almost secured a monopoly on “wow” in recent years. This has been due, in no small part, to their investment in Design.

Wow-factor in your industry will differ substantially from other industries… so when you are developing your new product – try to define what “wow-factor” could mean to your market segment… what attributes, benefits and features would bring unique value and appeal to your product?

Stay tuned for next week’s final installment of “Design = Change for the better”. Of course, if you have any comments or feedback – feel free below, or contact me directly.

To me, innovation is all about “implementing change for the better” otherwise, why bother?

It’s time we stopped theorising about innovation, and actually started doing. Leave it to the academics to rationalise, define and debate – we’re here to make things better, and innovation is the key.

So, how do you innovate?

(Beware – design rant approaching…)

Design is a major driver of innovation. It can help you identify, explore, prototype and test new ideas; it can analyse your current list of products and find ways to reduce cost, simplify, or perhaps conversely, increase their appeal and sophistication.

Before I launch into a verbose dialogue about the merits and benefits of Design (which could take a while – maybe I’ll do that later!), it’s probably better for me to simply give you some practical ideas about how to use Design in order to “implement change for the better”.

This is Part 1 of a 3 part series – and each part will be published weekly, so be sure to swing by again each week, or subscribe via RSS (top right) or through the Mailing List (see “Sign me up!” sidebar).

Focus, generate & visualise

I’ve talked before about “what we focus on happens” – those moments where we are so hell-bent on achieving an outcome that we don’t rest until it’s done… Well, it may come as a surprise to learn that creativity, design and innovation are exactly the same. These are activities that require focus in order to achieve outcomes.

Once we dedicate a period of time to focusing on a problem, we free ourselves of all the other troubles, issues, tasks and priorities in our day and simply knuckle-down to generating new ideas.

To generate ideas, there are a host of techniques you can use… big pieces of butcher’s paper, post-its, team brainstorms, mind-maps, cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagrams – the list goes on. The point is… USE AT LEAST ONE OF THESE! Talk is fine, but you must record your ideas somewhere, somehow. Get your ideas down on paper, so you can see where your ideas have taken you, and more importantly, where you might be able to go from here.

Visualising your ideas is incredibly important – particularly in product development. It doesn’t really matter if the idea is a scribble on a napkin, a more elaborate illustration from your designer or graphic artist, a basic 3D CAD model or even a quick mock-up or prototype. Visualisation (in two or three dimensions) is the first step to exploring and understanding the physics, mechanics and feasibility of the idea… forcing you to put size, location, shape and function into your idea… To visualise is to explore, filter and evaluate.

It’s important to recognise that “structure” is the key for navigating new idea generation and visualisation. Ideas have no value without context, relevance and opportunity for development. Structured idea-generating sessions can deliver quality ideas quickly and cost-effectively. I have helped many clients generate new product directions through formal “Focus / Generate / Visualise” sessions. If you would like to learn more about these sessions, please contact me.

Part 2 (next week) will discuss a simple set of criteria you can use to a) figure out if your new product idea has legs (well, not literally… but you know what I mean…), and b) use these criteria as a guide for decision-making during the product design and development process.