Each month our designers will be including an article to the Enhance blog on design related topics. This month, we are featuring the concept sketching process we utilize at the front end of each project.
IDEATION
Ideation is the development stage where our design team visualizes concepts; categorizes key features that contribute to a possible solution to the presented problem. This process is both abstract and concrete. Laying a solid foundation to build and develop innovative concepts. Drawing from your research to make informed design decisions and roughing out ideas, this process uses sketch models (made from paper, cardboard, tape, foam core, etc.) and sketching rough ideas (pen to paper, whiteboard drawings and digital sketching).
Sketching has taken to new platforms ranging from iPads to Microsoft Surface Pro tablets. The sketching tablet is the designer’s choice in sketching tools. Our design team uses Wacom Cintiq to discern and explore colors, textures, forms and features. Using a sketch tablet produces a higher fidelity concept and better allows our clients to visualize what the final product might look like.
We love working with innovators who are passionate about their ideas. Having clients involved with every stage of the development process is extremely important. So often, it is our clients that have experienced a problem, and so their invention is a response or solution to the pain of that problem. In that same way, it is important at the Ideation stage to take on physical experiments, setting scenarios and quick role playing can be useful for building empathy for the user. Only by doing so can the solutions that we design for, truly hit the mark and satisfy the problem for the user. For example, looking through the eyes of a visual impaired person could help draw different conclusions to better understand the problems they face using daily products.
Ideation is an iterative process and it is always important to keep an open mind. That way, each phase or round of ideation can get you closer to the best possible solution, even if the final product strays from the initial concept.
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Enhance Product Development is a professional design firm that specializes in launching new products for inventors, entrepreneurs and start ups. For product development inquiries please contact Enhance Product Development at https://enhancepd.com/contact/ or call us at 877-993-6426.
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