At some point along the way, you’re probably going to find yourself redesigning one of your products. Whether it needs some minor tweaks or a total overhaul, redesigning can be a frustrating part of the process. You thought your product was ready to go, and now you’ve found that it isn’t quite as ready as you thought. At Pivot, we know that redesigning can be tough—it feels like you’re back to square one. But we also know that a simple redesign can be the difference between the failure or success of your product.
There are a few reasons you might need to redesign a product. It could be that the original design you came up with simply needs more work, and that it’s not yet ready for market. Or it could be that your design now needs to accommodate a new manufacturing or assembly environment. And the third reason you might need to redesign is that you’re trying to improve performance, lower the cost, or make your product more reliable—some type of improvement on past designs.
Remember that redesign is usually simpler than the original design itself. There are most likely specific areas or problems to focus on, rather than a completely blank slate. Also keep in mind that if your product has already been on the market and seen some success, but you want to improve certain areas, that the people who originally purchased your product may have liked it the way it was. Make sure that your redesign doesn’t drastically change anything that was a user favorite. This might be a good time to do some market research and make sure your redesign will please old customers, as well as draw in new ones.
Talk with your customers and identify what their needs are and what more they would like from your product. Analyze similar competing products to see what improvements you could make that they don’t have, and then refine all of those specifications so that you have a good idea of what the final redesign should look like. Think of it as a wish list. Then refine that list based on your technical, financial, or manufacturing limits.
Realize that there might be multiple redesigns, and that it may not all come together immediately, especially if there was a significant problem in your first design. Having patience and not giving up on a design that needs changes will end up paying off for you in the long run.
But if you’ve been working on a redesign and just can’t get it right, you may need some help. Turn to the experts at Pivot for all your redesign needs. We can sit down with you and our engineers to determine how you can improve upon the previous design and address any issues. So contact us today if you’re ready to get to work on redesigning your product.
