Every great invention starts somewhere—often on the back of a napkin. But the gap between a sketch and a market-ready product can feel like an abyss.
To help founders bridge that gap, NextCorps launched Beyond the Sketch, a series exploring the intersection of design, prototyping, and manufacturing. Featuring insights from local innovation leaders and our resident industrial design firm, BZDesign, the series provides a roadmap for bringing physical products to life.
The following are key takeaways from the first event of the series, Beyond the Sketch: Prototyping 101, which invited a panel of designers, founders, and engineers to share their hard-won lessons on transforming early sketches into market-ready products.
1. Start with purpose
Before you touch a 3D printer, write down exactly what you want to learn. Don’t just build to see if you can build it; build to see if the customer actually wants it. A prototype is an answer to a specific question.
“The key to every prototype is that it needs to have a purpose,” said Mike Riedlinger, managing director of technology commercialization at NextCorps.
“Our organization focuses on helping innovation companies launch and grow. While we have fabrication facilities and programs that can help founders forward their ideas, the starting point is to have real intent. Start by asking, what is it you most want to learn about each and every prototype you build? It helps if you literally write the answers down to get the ideas out of your head and into your hands so that you can explore them further and share them with others.”
2. Leverage the power of observation
Don’t rely solely on what customers say they want—watch what they actually do. Observe their “hacks” and the buttons they never touch. The most valuable functional improvements come from watching a user’s real-world struggle.
“My industrial design firm was hired to update an IBM industrial scanner that hadn’t been touched since the 1960s,” shared Ben Zombek, product designer and founder of BZDesign. “We went out and talked to end users. The first thing we asked was for them to show us how they do their jobs. By watching them, it was clear the user experience wasn’t intuitive. To do the number-one function, they had to open up a drawer and go down into the machine. The big red button that was front and center, they never used.
“You can’t just go to production with your product and then find out, ‘Oh wow, this thing is not what I thought it was!’ You really need to consider the human factors as the most critical part of the design sprint.”
3. Don’t suffer in silence
Technical failures (like a 3D print that keeps warping) are part of the process, but you don’t have to solve them alone. Enlist the help of application engineers early on to help you choose the right materials and settings before you waste time and money.
“The NextCorps FabLab has a lot of equipment and software to build your prototype, and BZDesign is on hand to teach you how to use it. Because NextCorps is our customer, my job is not to sell you anything, it’s to guide you to success,” explained Jordan Sayegh, application engineer at CADimensions. “You can come to me and say, ‘Hey, this print’s not working, it keeps failing,’ or, ‘It’s not coming out the way I expect.’ Using our additive manufacturing experience, we’ll mentor you through the technical hurdles of 3D printing.”
4. Fail faster in the digital realm
Cutting chips (machining metal) is expensive and slow. Master the ins and outs of CAD software early so you can run through dozens of iterations and catch design flaws virtually before you ever spend a dime on physical materials.
“I love seeing people bring in a napkin sketch, thinking, ‘This is what I want to do.’ It’s a lot quicker and easier to draw it in CAD first and then evolve it,” shared Frank Cavalier, software account manager at CADimensions.
“The modern startup ecosystem, like what NextCorps offers, allows for rapid, low-cost failure in the digital realm before a single piece of metal is cut. As Jordan said, our job is to really help you in year one to get things off the ground and get some designs out there. Then, hopefully, we’ll see your product for sale in the market.”
5. Simplify and scale down
Your first prototype is likely to be 200% overbuilt. Look for ways to cut weight, size, and cost of materials immediately. A successful product isn’t just one that works; it’s one that can be manufactured repeatedly and profitably.
“Our product started very low-tech: We took a steam torch, a solid chunk of metal, and put it on our foreheads to address migraine pain,” said Adam Baker, industrial designer at BZDesign and co-founder of KHIO by Prolivio. “We loved the cooling sensation, but we knew we needed to develop it into something repeatable, testable, and performing at a high level. We learned that, initially, we way overbuilt our product.
“In going through programming like NextCorps’ Manufacturing Accelerator and in working with their Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, we evolved our ‘caveman’ solution into a high-tech wearable that’s now in the hands of more than 60 users.”
6. Polish your prototype
If you want your invention to move from a hobbyist project to a commercial standard, you have to move past glued-together acrylic. Professional enclosures and standardized mechanical designs are what make people take your technology seriously.
“I became an entrepreneur somewhat by accident,” shared Josh Sanders, neuroscientist and founder of Sanworks. “Almost everyone in the field of neuroscience research was tinkering and developing instrumentation systems with little knowledge of what they were doing. I developed my first commercial instrument using open-source technology, with designs for enclosures that were made from sheets of acrylic that you could literally stick together. I quickly learned that you have to be a little more professional.
“That’s when I started working with local resources, including BZDesign and NextCorps, to develop a premium look and feel that was optimized for production. Eventually, my side project became a global resource for research labs.”
7. Make the invisible tangible
If your technology is too small or complex to see (like a microchip), you must invest in packaging. Creating a cohesive, portable unit that people can actually hold is often the difference between a cool idea and securing millions in funding.
“My company uses photonic chips that are the size of a grain of rice. But the initial setup required a room full of equipment,” said Dan Steiner, PhD, co-founder and CTO of Phlotonics. “When we first started talking to investors, they’d say, ‘In all the photos you’ve shown me, the instrumentation is literally an office table, essentially $180,000 worth of equipment. How are you going to make this thing actually usable?’
“With that feedback, we condensed an entire optical system down into a 10 x 10 x 6-inch box. Now, all of a sudden, when people see the photo of our product, they say, ‘And that’s all happening inside this cube?’ When we said yes, they said yes: We received over $2.5 million in government funds.”
8. Tap into available resources
Whether building a cooling headband for migraine sufferers or a molecular monitor, the consensus from our first Beyond the Sketch speakers was clear: Use the resources around you, design with intent, and don’t be afraid to put a rough prototype in a user’s hands.
Remember: Success isn’t just about the final product. It’s about the discovery along the way.
Working on a physical product? Explore the FabLab for a look at the tools, equipment, and expertise that can help you build your next prototype, and consider collaborating with partners like BZDesign. If you’re ready for production, check out the free, virtual Manufacturing Accelerator to speed your path to market success.