Design a Product that's Better

What is a high-performance product

When Max Verstappen is zooming around a race track, taking corners at speeds that would make most humans close their eyes and prayer for Mum.

He's not thinking about why the traction on his left rear wheel is failing. He is paid to drive the car as best he can with what he has. And at the moment, he has a part of the car that isn't helping him perform at his best.

Obviously, I don't know what Max is actually thinking. But I can guess the engineers are preping for the wrath of Max. Jokes. They're already planning the next iteration to have the part not get in his way. Plus Max has a bit of a temper, who wants to stand in his way? jokes again?

Designing parts and products for high performance comes down to one main objective.

Does the product maintain, increase or hinder the performance of the person using the product for the purpose?

When we're cooking at home and we have to measure out the flour to bake our grandmother's famous pecan tart. It doesn't matter if we take 3 steps to measure out the flour or 2 steps. We do it once every now and then, and it doesn't make a difference to the time we take.

In fact, many enjoy just the process of baking! Even if it's more 'work' to do.
A process like baking can be enjoyed as the process is part of the experience.

If you think about home coffee connoisseurs, the process is very much a part of the pleasure. Taking time to measure, grind, sift, smell, and brew their morning treat. Quite the opposite from an espresso bar where you need good coffee, fast and consistent.

In a commercial bakery at 3am, if the baker is bogged down with equipment that requires extra steps, or difficult usability. She doesn't have time to waste at 3am, it takes away from her precious sleep, family time and eats into her customers experience if she can't produce fast, consistent and delicious produce!

You can see a trend here.

High-performance products are built for just that. Helping the users perform at their best.

Not all high-performance products are created equal. While some may excel in one area, they may fall short in others. Max's high-performing car may be incredibly fast but lack fuel efficiency, while a high-performance dough mixer may have exceptional mixing power but cost as much as a double door fridge. We have to understand the specific needs and requirements of the user to fully understand and design where the product needs to perform.

High-performance products are in every industry, used by average Joe's, to semi-professionals, to the best in the game.
Sportsmen, professional bakers, race car drivers, fishermen, chefs, miners, chess players, I can go on.... the industries are endless.

How do we define a high-performance product?

High-performance products are designed to deliver optimal results in their respective fields, giving users an edge over their competitors or enabling them to achieve their desired objectives with speed, and excellence, consistently.

I see 3 factors are necessary for a high-performance product:

Speed , Excellence and Consistency

Speed helps the user perform the task either at the 'standard' speed or more efficient.
Excellence helps the user achieve better results by using a quality tool.
Consistency helps the user perform the task the same, every time.

What does it take to build a high-performance product?

In its simplified form, designing for high performance is about:
1. Designing,
2. Building,
3. Testing past the limits (breaking s**t),
4. Updating the design,
5. Then testing again.

You repeat this for as many design cycles as you need until you have a product that does the job well, for as many reps as needed. Hitting the goals of speed, excellence and consistency for the operator.

What's involved when developing a high-performance product

Design and engineering of a high-performance product.

When embarking on this journey to develop a product that helps your customer perform at their best.
The first critical part is to deeply understand your customer's need for the product. You can't do this by internet researching only. You have to dive deep into your customer's method of using the product and what they results the require

Interviewing, observing, testing and online research, are needed in connecting all the dots. It's using this understanding of the need that helps guide the design process and rank necessary features.

The pain point or objective of the product has to be understood and defined. Without that, you are wasting your time and will struggle to find a direction to head into.

The next goal is to prioritize your customer's requirements within the objective. This is a hierarchical list of what is most important, tricking down to least to help them perform at their best. This list should be generated from your research, intuition and feedback. This list is not set in stone, but it needs to be defined enough for you to make design decisions based on the objectives. It helps the design team prioritize one feature over another, because as much as we like Sporks, they just do everything with a 6 out of 10.

Let's look at this safety helmet we developed. We had a list of objectives from the client with a group of core objectives:

Core objective 1 was to create a Type 2 safety helmet.
That means it had to pass all the ANSI and EN safety tests for that particular category of helmet. Size, material thickness, structure, and electric conductivity all integrated around the design to pass all the required safety tests.

The second core objective was comfort and ease of use. We wanted our users to be able to use the visor, ear muffs, face shield with ease. Replace components when necessary and reduce the overall 'irritation' of actually wearing a safety helmet. These things are not all that fun to wear.

Our third core objective was to make sure the product matched the brand aesthetic and looked 's**t hot'. This phrase was coined by Stephan our lead industrial designer on this project.

Now when the client approached us, these objectives were actually inverted. Making sure the product looked awesome was the request. But we couldn't have a 's**t hot' looking helmet that didn't pass the safety tests and was uncomfortable, so we had to work on all 3 core objectives as they were the main priorities.

Prototyping and testing a high-performance product

Building your high-performance product to test depends heavily on what type of product you are designing.
A small devise that helps a golfer hold their putter in a more controlled way might be much easier, cheaper and more available to prototype and test than a safety helmet.

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One of the ANSI safety helmet tests requires a metal spike to be dropped from a height onto the top of the helmet. This measures how sharp objects falling from above and how much penetration the helmet will prevent. This test requires the exact helmet shape, the exact material of the shell, the exact internal EPS foam to make sure that the testing gives us the results that would happen with the final product.
Using substitute materials cannot give you the exact results you are looking for. That means you have to almost go through the full design process until molding to test the product, which is an expensive process to go wrong.

We can now go back to the main objectives that the product is being designed for. This will help the design team understand what needs to be tested, which allows them to design that testing into the product design process.
This is an important step in being efficient with testing and only testing what is needed based on the requirements.

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Production of a high-performance product.

I'm sure by now you can understand the importance of quality within a high-performance product.
When it's time for production, it is no different. quality control is critical in ensuring your product is being produced the same every time with minal defects.

Choosing a manufacturer for a high-performance product requires understanding their capabilities, are they setup for regulation testing, do they have a good quality control system, what is their rate of faults, what is their insurance policy.
Depending on if your product has to save lives, or help a home baker, depends on the risk you can take in choosing a manufacturer. If there are lives at stake, you guessed it, extra caution must bet taken and choosing a premium manufacturer is necessary.

High-performance product design

High-performance products can give your customers the edge they need to excel in various aspects of life.

From the technology industry to personal care to safety, these products can transform the way we work, feel, and live. Mostly for the better!

Whether it's to enhance productivity, improve your health, improve performance or simply protect. We design high-performance products to help our customers be better and perform at their best

We love the world of high-performance products because it pushes the boundaries, and the process of thinking, designing, building, and testing is awesome.

Here's to breaking things and building better products!

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