Blog
Internal innovation teams are everywhere these days. And for good reason: who better to spot opportunities, propose smarter systems, or dream up the next big thing than the people already working inside your company?
SPARK Product Development is proud and excited to announce that October 31st marks our 27th anniversary as a company! For nearly three decades, we’ve been
To be clear from the start—we are not discouraging anybody from trying to help. Feeling the weight of the current global crisis, many people are compelled to do their part and are making sacrifices to contribute to the effort to save lives. It’s an admirable quality and it is encouraging to see people come together for a positive goal. However, we also live in a complex world and good intentions with poor direction may not have the desired impact.
We messed up with a new client.
SPARK has been in business for 22 years and in that time, we’ve never stopped learning.
We’ve learned that the reality in working with inventors and startups is that, in most cases, they’ve never done this before so they don’t exactly know what they want. You can lead a horse to water, but then it’s up to the horse to drink the water, so to speak.
Picture this. You’ve been at the beach with your friends all day, and can’t wait to get back to the nearest shower. You manage to be the first one to sneak off and claim the bathroom to yourself. Finally; the moment you’ve been waiting for. You decide to go ahead and turn the water on… I said, you decide to go ahead and turn the water on…
According to Nielsen Norman Group, five users is the sweet spot for testing the usability of your product. You can learn 80% of what you need to know about how people will respond to your product from just five users, allowing you to quickly receive feedback and iterate before putting your improved design in front of five new users.
Several years ago SPARK had the opportunity to work with ADI Engineering (now Silicom Ltd.) on a project for Intel. The success of that project has led to an ongoing partnership between between SPARK and Silicom. However, that partnership may have never been possible if not for our strong relationship with Jason Jenkins and Spectrum Metal Services in Midlothian, VA.
So, you're in inventor- an entrepreneur- and you have a hardware based product idea. Nice! You think it through and decide it's time to push yourself ahead of the crowd. You do your due diligence to select a product development firm, forming a relationship and setting up a contract. In the plans are up front prototyping and revised/educated design to follow.
When designing screw bosses for plastic injection molding, certain parameters must be taken into account such as wall thickness, coring, draft, etc. When prototyping with 3D printing, especially with FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling), these bosses can become finicky and delicate features to work with.
Let’s make something together
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