Technology is part of everyday life, and savvy entrepreneurs are leveraging technology to create marketable tech products. If you have a tech product idea, it has never been a better time to design, develop, and make money by selling a tech product.
However, creating a marketable tech product can prove pretty difficult if you don’t know what you are doing. There are a number of key aspects to consider before getting to that final product. You need to have the right technology, understand how to develop prototypes, like utilizing used waterjets to cut material, and much more.
If you are a non-techie entrepreneur, this can all be even more challenging. But there is good news. With a bit of know-how and some basic skills, you can create a great product. The following 5 steps to create a marketable tech product may serve you well. Let’s get right to it.
Step #1. Develop Clear Goals For Your Tech Product
Having clear goals in place for your tech product is critical for ensuring success moving forward. You should begin with a document outlining everything you can think of, including overall solution for the consumer, features, functionality, cost of development, retail price, and more.
Product development is all about innovation. But always be thinking about the compromises you may need to make. There should be a balance of meeting consumer needs whale outperforming similar competitor products. This is why having clear goals is important. Because there will be compromises along the way.
For instance, if you plan on developing a marketable tech product in the smart home device space, you may be thinking of a compact product. This will mean making compromises in functionality, since you can only have so much room within the device for battery size, and other performance aspects.
The iPad is one good example of compromise. When Apple designed the iPad, it revolutionized the idea of the keyboard. Before the physical keyboard was a staple. However, Apple made the screen enabled keyboard part of the popular tech product. This of course caused tech product designers to compromise on other functions due to the size of the iPad.
Step #2. Gather Professionals To Create Electronic Functionality And Features
As a tech entrepreneur, you may not be so electronically inclined. And this is not a negative. You simply need the expertise to support your tech product vision in order to create a working and marketable product. One that you envisioned.
Once you have the electronic components identified, you can call upon an electrical engineer to connect the dots. This means having a detailed blueprint that is known as a schematic circuit design. Computer simulations and other electrical engineer skills may also be applied at this crucial step.
Step #3. Get Your Tech Product Prototypes Ready
Once the electronics are mapped out by you or your engineer, and your goals are defined and moving in the right direction, it is time to bring a prototype to life. The PCB files you or your engineer created will be used to develop a tech product prototype for testing.
The product prototype stage will have two steps to it. First, the PCB is created. Next, all components are attached to the PCB and prototype as needed. Each of these prototype steps require different expertise. If you feel you are up for it, you can do it yourself. But if you need to call on a few pros, do so in order to create a prototype without any serious issues.
Step #4. Functionality Analysis And Troubleshooting
In step #4, you will still be fine-tuning the electronic components for the features and functionality of your tech product prototype. The assembled circuit boards need to work properly and be analyzed based on performance, power management, and other key functionality factors.
Once this is done, programming can be done next. If there are any issues that arise in the programming stage, they will need to be adjusted on the future PCB version. But the idea is to have no issues. However, this is usually never the case. Issues arise, and it is normal. Just be ready to handle them when they surface.
Step #5. Time To Create The Housing For Your Tech Product
This is the final step in the actual development of the tech product. And in many cases, the housing development is usually aligned with the other steps in creating a marketable tech product.
The electronics of your product will also play a role in the housing you create prior to going to market. You may want to have a few prototypes for the housing to see how small, or how the product can look. To make the housing, you can use several devices, like a waterjet cutter, 3D printer, and more.
Wrapping Up . . .
The above 5 steps to create a marketable tech product are certainly worth considering. There are of course other steps involved, but these are the broad strokes when it comes to tech product development. Have you developed a marketable tech product? What steps did you find useful?
