Consider a prototype as a kind of product sampling when you want to develop a product. In creating, building, and manufacturing an electronic product, prototyping is an important part of the product development process. Making an electronic product prototype can benefit you in so many ways, such as cost reduction and flaws prevention. Without it, you wouldn’t know how accurate your design will be made into a real product, and you would need a much larger total of time, effort, and money, while the product outcome may possibly not be as precise.
A prototype is considered an important phase in the electronics manufacturing field because there might be some unwanted expenses. An electronic product prototype is essential because it can transform your design into existence to be evaluated before the mass-manufacturing.
To dive deeper into the matter, we have listed four benefits of electronic product prototyping:
Concept Validation
Making an electronic product prototype can help you validate the product’s concept. Because when you build a product, often, the concept and the outcome look different. So, prototyping the product would guide you and the manufacturer to be in tune when it comes to the concept.
Lowering the Risk
An electronic product prototype helps engineers to part the whole design into simpler parts to test each one of them. It helps you to identify any errors and find better solutions because the earlier you spot the area to improve, the sooner you can fix the problems before mass manufacturing.
Measure the Durability
Prototyping an electronic product before the mass-manufacturing can help control the quality and durability. You can test the electronic product prototype to whether it’s durable enough or if there are any parts that need to be upgraded.
Cost Effective
Prototyping helps your manufacturer to gain insight regarding the amount of material needed, which then helps in calculating the true cost-per-unit before mass manufacturing the product. As it costs nothing to change a concept, it costs a significant expense to reproduce them when the product has been mass-manufactured. Apart from that, an electronic product prototype is a great tool to feel your product’s true form and finish.
The Types of Electronic Product Prototype
There are a few types of an electronic product prototypes that you can use. Each prototype has its own functionality, such as being used for marketing, securing funding, testing some assumptions, or gathering more data about the product.
Proof of Concept (POC) Prototype
This is an early-stage prototype to prove the basic concept and the technical possibility of your product. It may not look like the final product, but it can prove the fundamental concept of the product at the lowest cost. A proof of concept prototype is usually used to determine the practicality of a new product idea. For electronic products, it is usually made using off-the-shelf development boards like Arduino or Raspberry Pi.
Looks-Like Prototype
A looks-like prototype serves as the final product’s real appearance, it doesn’t have any functionality of your desired product. This electronic product prototype focuses on enhancing your product’s look, feel, form, and aesthetics. This is the end result of the industrial design process where the outer look and finish of your product are designed. The techniques for this prototype will use foam, clay, 3D printing, CNC machining, or even injection molding.
Works-Like Prototype
While a looks-like prototype focuses on the appearance of the final product, a works-like prototype focuses on the functionality of the product, for example, the internal electronics for electronic products. As the functionality of your product is proven, you can now move to a custom-designed Printed Circuit Board (PCB) for your product to hold and connect all of your product’s separated electronic components. A PCB helps you reduce the unnecessary components and the internal space needed. This electronic product prototype works on a similar level to real product development.
The Process from Prototype to Mass-Manufacturing
From creating an electronic product prototype to making the product into a whole existence, there are steps to be followed.
Step 1: Conceptualizing & Designing
This is the first and foremost step to beginning your product development journey. You need a solid concept of the function and who your target audience of the product would be. Further, you will need to think of the market strategy so that your product not only is useful and functional but also can be nicely distributed in the market.
Step 2: Product Design
When you finally have the solid concept, you can move to the next step; designing the product. Through this step, you can research and explore the exact measurement and sizes of the product to be prototyped.
Step 3: Prototyping the Product
Before you can mass-manufacture your product, developing an electronics prototype should be on top of your mind to prevent errors and reduce the production cost. An electronic product prototype helps you to grasp the look, feel, and function of the product, for when an error arises, it can be immediately fixed.
Step 4: Pre-Production
After the prototype version has been approved, the next step is to produce very few final products to see how they’re going to look and function. Well, if you think about it, this step serves as the final step before you begin mass manufacturing.
Step 5: Mass-Manufacturing
When all is finally well, it’s now the time to mass-manufacture the true form of your electronic product.
