Prototyping New Pet Products

An introduction to prototyping new pet products.

Prototyping is the most important process of product development. It directly determines the direction of the product functionality, appearance and overall design for production. Dyson famously made over 1200 prototypes of his first vacuum cleaner but often we aim for more like 4 or 5 prototypes for complex items and 2 to 3 for simple products. This article will give you knowledge about the prototyping process for new pet product ideas.

Initial or low fidelity prototypes are where performance of the key functions of the product and the basic user interaction can be tested and modified easily. Fast to produce with lower material and production costs so that the investment is minimised while the risk of prototypes needing modification is higher.

Medium fidelity prototype are often Mark 2 versions when the key elements have been tested and agreed. These prototypes add more details and the interaction, look and feel are all more similar to the final product. In most cases, medium fidelity prototype is enough for the user to fully experience the final product, you can test the usability of the product and ensure that the major problems have been resolved.

High fidelity prototypes are where the prototype that most close to the final product. At this stage all the features of the product and user interaction should be modelled with materials, colours and finishes very close to the final product. Making high-fidelity prototypes is expensive and should only be done once the design is almost final.  It is also the case that you need to spend more time and development effort, and it will be more time-consuming when you need to make some adjustments.

Prototyping
Prototyping parts

Advantages of the prototyping:

  1. Test the usability of the product to find problems
  2. Easy to communicate with users, investors, stakeholders and other relevant people
  3. Improve the efficiency of product design
  4. Improves the design before expensive production tooling is commissioned.
  5. Can be used for gaining early stage market feedback.
  6. Can also be used for initial marketing assets before production to gain valuable pre-launch content.

Disadvantages of the prototyping:

Time-consuming and expensive!

There are often unexpected problems during the development process, even if the design has been revised several times. Prototyping will highlight to you and your the development team where are the problems and provide an opportunity to improve it before it is launched to the public. If you have any questions about it. please do get in touch.

Design Engineering
Squidjet Prototype

We’ve worked with a number of clients to bring innovative pet products to the market. 

If you would like to carry on reading more about prototyping new pet products and other stages involved in making a pet product click here. 

If you’ve got a project for a pet product but don’t know how to go about developing it, contact us today and we can arrange a call to discuss it. 

Do we sound like the product design company you've been looking for?

Get in touch with us today to discuss your requirements.

Hot off the press:

Expert Knowledge

We’re all about helping companies, startups and entrepreneurs to succeed with designing new products.

Get your hands on some of our carefully crafted videos, pdfs and podcasts. If you want to successfully develop and launch a new product idea then click the images to discover more about these free, instantly available resources.

Client Testimonials

What people say

From idea

to successful

product

All the resources you will need:

Bonus 40min extended case-study video!