We have a classical product design process, in 3 phase:
- That is when all starts: We start investing money, time, involving worldwide experts, use our lab facilities, testing the idea with end users and commercial partners... and have the objective to demonstrate that this idea is maybe crazy, but no so much in term of industrial and commercial feasibility.
- It's then time to prototype, and to increase our involvement in the idea. If the idea is relevant enough, we have to find grants that believe in its social or ecological aspect, or investors that will take the risk with us. During some months, we give all what we can to test, interact, find materials, design, understand of the needs. It is the phase of essays and errors, that must lead to deliver a product that materialize our options and choices and can be presented to our network.
- At the end of this, we can hopefully go into the long and expensive phase of pilot, so important in our rural market. Too many projects go directly from a quick prototype to a definitive product. We want to take time to deliver the cheapest, most relevant, most efficient and scaleable product. We work more and more with our commercial and grassroot partners to understand what we have to do, as designers, to improve the efficiency of our prototype. Through field surveys and interactive workshops, we take the advice of our end users.
- If everything gos well, the pilot should deliver a object finished on a design point of view, tested, with main options fixed. It's now time to work even more closely with industrials to minimize the manufacturing costs; and to find a relevant way to deliver our product to people.
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