Auckland's AUT was the venue for the recent SPD Seminar. The seminar, hosted by Locus Research, Motovated Design & Analysis, and EverEdge IP, was aimed at businesses developing products or interested in developing new products and services, and presented an informed view on what it takes to develop innovative products that really connect with customers.
Locus Research's Timothy Allan talked through the importance of a structured design process that starts with good research. Tim introduced the concept of the Product System - a framework for insight driven product development. This includes defining the product and associated service and understanding the interactions and activities of users, purchasers, stakeholders and influencers. Understanding and clearly defining the product system is an excellent start point for uncovering new and valuable insights. Start thinking of your products in terms of the benefits they deliver, solving problems that will really make a difference to the customers through the value chain.
Paul Davies from EverEdgeIP spoke about strategies for protecting and leveraging your IP. He discussed IP commercialisation - turning IP into economic or strategic value and gave a number of case studies to underscore the advantages of doing this.
Jonathan Prince of Motovated Design & Analysis, like Tim, talked about the benefit of a good design process to successful product development. He gave some excellent examples of getting it right and getting it wrong. Jonathan talked about the danger of designing products based on perception rather than research and fact. Jonathan also showed how tools such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) can help companies save time and money by getting the design right before you cut the steel.
