Design contests

This may be a situation where you would want to get someone that has been through all of this before.

There are lots of very talented students … who know very little about process and material constraints, your constraints, or have the dogged incentive derived from the personal financial involvement in your project, that you do.

You know what you are talking about … you should be talking to someone who knows what they are talking about (and that comes from experience).

All of these points are appreciated and forcing me to rethink this.

But don’t misunderstand…we have a great deal of respect for the professional sector. Our situation is a little unique in that we have already engineered a product, selected materials (my partner is a mechanical engineer), modeled the design in 3D (yes we paid a professional designer to model our drawings), tooled up (sorry…had to go to China for that), and built a batch of units. Now, we simply have to make this thing attractive and inspiring. And, the kicker is, we’re really running low on funds. So that’s where we thought it might make sense to go the student route.

So if you guys were in our shoes, what would you do?

Sounds like you are done. You don’t need a designer now, you need a salespeson. A designer (esp. a student) will likely not be able to slap lipstick on the pig you’ve created which is what it sounds like you are looking for. If it’s all tooled up and built, what do you expect them to do? Throw a couple of nice stickers on it and paint it red to make it nice looking?

If you are looking to start from scratch, that’s another story, but most likely any designer worth their time would not just put a new box around your hardware, but probably bring more to the table to make it more attractive functionally and user-wise… doesn’t sound like you want to pay for that though…

R

R

So if you guys were in our shoes, what would you do?

Well, you’ve certainly been completely upfront (I’d use the term 'transparent" but it leaves a taste in my mouth).

And so has Richard.

What you describe is a typical, I’m sorry to say, chain of events in many manufacturing companies; engineering dictates what and how the product will be built and that dictates what it looks like… “Industrial Design” works best co-incidentally with engineering, in my opinion.

You have no, or very little, money to work with. Get the product into a Trade Show ASAP and “clean it up” next time around. The old saying, “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” may apply. Perhaps you could always market toward the “all-business, no-frills” consumer.

That said… post some photos for us. Maybe you’re just too close to the project to see it from a different perspective; perhaps a coat of red paint and some snazzy stickers is all it does need… .

It’s not as though we couldn’t raise additional funding :slight_smile:

We have been to trade shows with the device. When we demonstrate it’s capabilities, people flip. But at first glance, we get, “what the heck is that goofy thing?”

Progressive certainly has the money, but chose the college contest route.

And they went from this:

to this:

…with a student contest.

I’d be willing to share drawings privately, but wouldn’t be comfortable posting them here.

I don’t know what that thing above is, but IMHO it looks worse after. It looks like a kid’s toy. I’d use that as an example of why not to hire a student (not that all students are bad, but that thing looks like the typical terrible first year project).

R

The reason the Progressive contest is maybe more acceptable is that people have heard of Progressive. In a students portfolio that could be a huge project it shows they worked with a high dollar brand got something very functional out of it. Plus it is a product with clear change. What you are offering is not that. You are a start up you don’t bring brand recognition. You are also not talking about allowing the changes that Progressive did. With a full redesign of the product, packaging, and graphic application that is a full project. You are talking about maybe stickers or graphic application on a small to nothing budget this is not going to end in the same kind of success Progressive had for you or the student.

YES, I agree, it looks like a toy.

BUT, that’s where the insurance companies are these days.

Geico has the gecko…
Aflack has the duck…
MetLife has Snoopy…

and Progressive has Flo and her new toy!

So maybe Progressive felt that this design was in line with the ‘fun and games’ nonsense that many of these insurance companies are pitching.

Singletrack, you are partially correct. We don’t have the brand recognition of a Progressive Insurance.

But we are certainly looking for more than paint and stickers. That was never our thought.

So it’s starting to look like our idea of a “design upgrade” really amounts to a full redesign (i.e. full project).

So maybe Plan B becomes, “Let’s get some preliminary concept sketches, show those to the investors to get them excited enough to dump money into a full redesign, and then go hire some professionals.”

I suggest that there may be a whole lot more involved to your product than there is with Progressive’s My Rate trip sensor/recorder re-work; read: “simpler” (smaller size, fewer components, fewer materials, few mechanical interfaces, fewer tools, less expense, etc.)

In the end, it may come down to if whoever re-designs your product isn’t “capable” then you will be wasting your funds. Now that isn’t to say that a student is not capable, but if you selected a student generated “design” who would carry it through to completion? Typically, as we all have experienced, student life seldom, if ever, allows for more than keeping up with curricular work loads. And design projects seldom, if every, are complete and require massaging to reach production; which means continuous design input. If you are saying that “you” will provide the final design work, I would offer that that’s how you got to where you are now…

Leading to…

Plan B becomes, “Let’s get some preliminary concept sketches, show those to the investors to get them excited enough to dump money into a full redesign, and then go hire some professionals.”

And when it comes time to find “some professionals” you couldn’t find a better source than the Core77 Design Directory

Nice segue, huh… … ?

I thought I already wrote this…

That is even worse. Having students work for free, so you can get money to pay someone to do the project and not even use the student concepts?

There are so many things wrong with that both from a moral and execution perspective. The students may come up with something impossible to produce, or not even have enough experience to address your real problems. I guarantee you that if you were to follow this approach and then later hire a real designer you’d be in a situation with more problems and a totally different scope, and not be able to deliver what you showed your investors…

Your best bet is to get just enough money to pay a pro for some nice eye candy concepts and real evaluation of where you are at (so you know how much work is really involved) so you can show that to investors to have a plan and $ in place to do the project.

R

Lmo, I tee’d that one up for you!

What do you guys think about using freelancer.com and getting some designers from India to bid on this?


JUST KIDDING :laughing:

R, didn’t mean to suggest we’d use students for the concepts. I meant professionals for that, too!!

But if the investor’s don’t bite, may I offer another suggestion?

If all you need is a designer’s touch on an existing product why not go on Coroflot, find a few student portfolios you like and offer one of them something like $500-1000 to whip up some concepts? That’s not a ton of money, but it would go a long way for a college student, (beer money) who would in turn work hard to please you specifically, rather than treating it like homework.

You get what you pay for, so I wouldn’t expect a miracle, but you will probably get a better result hiring one designer you like with real cash instead of fishing for free concepts from multiple designers.

Spec work sucks.

cdaisy, that sounds very reasonable. I really never intended to get anything for free. But I realize now that spec is common in this industry… and a touchy subject!

why not go on Coroflot, find a few student portfolios you like and offer one of them something like $500-1000 to whip up some concepts? You get what you pay for…

there’s an echo in here, here, here. … . .

students may come up with something impossible to produce, or not even have enough experience to address your real problems. I guarantee you that if you were to follow this approach and then later hire a real designer you’d be in a situation with more problems and a totally different scope, and not be able to deliver what you showed your investors…

my segue didn’t work, it’s all your Richard… …

Plan B: Go hire some professionals. Period.

This is another case of not involing a designer from the very start of the product development process. It usually neds up being a case of polishing a turd and using design as an illfitting afterthought. Having it tooled already means it is already at the point of no return. Any new design would likely require additional tooling. Hence my earlier point of getting into a situation where you end up paying more money to fix something that to simply just invest and do it right from the get go.

Design is much more than just doing a few styling sketches after something has been engineered. Designers really should be involved at the very beginning of a product’s creation. There are so many things a good industrial designer can contribute to the overall product definition that would save and make you money in the long run.

Stepitup: I just wanted to say thank you for sticking around Core77 and being open minded to the conversation. So many people in your position post here and when they dont hear the answer they where hoping for they get mad and storm off, usually screaming that we are elitist pricks. What i am taking from this conversation is that we as designers need to better convey to the masses that money spent on quality design is money well spent.

That’s no echo. I suggested he pay one student designer decent money instead of going for quantity.

It is rather arrogant to assume that his needs will not be met unless he spends a ton of money on a total re-design from a pro, especially when we have no idea what he really needs. That is basically what your post suggests, so I don’t know how that is an echo. There are plenty of “small” design jobs where someone needs a little push in the right direction, not a total rebuild. This might be the case, and a good student can handle that.

As if no one here has ever done some down and dirty side work while they where training to be a designer. Give me a break.

I’d just say this: I don’t think that students are incapable of having some good ideas. But good ideas are only valuable if you can separate them from the bad and execute. A student will likely not have the experience to do this, which is why in the real world they work under a more experienced professional as a junior until they can do it themselves. “A push in the right direction” may be all you need, but how do you know which direction that should be?

It seems clear that the OP doesn’t have much experience working with design (pretty indicative of the process not including design at the start). As such I would think you might be worse off chasing your tail trying to wade through design concepts from a student without the ability to filter them and keep in mind execution and other factors.

You’ll get what you pay for, but if funding is tight, there is no sense in throwing good money after bad. A pro will be worth the difference in what you pay them.

R