It’s a slight oversimplification to say that once you have turned your product idea into a product specification, you are ready to move on to the design phase. In reality the border between these two phases of development is fuzzy; parts of the design process will fill out and possibly alter the specification, which will in turn inform further design decisions.
However when you do start design and prototyping work, you will find new pitfalls waiting for the unwary. Chief amongst these is the selection of the right electronic components for your product. If you just look at the technical specification of components, you can lead yourself into serious problems.
Components have life cycles. Chip manufacturers regularly produce new versions of existing products as manufacturing techniques change, their knowledge of customer requirements refine, and new silicon design processes allow new products of their own. Older chips will consequently fall out of production as newer designs take over. This has a direct impact on the design of your product; the chip that most perfectly fits into the design is no use whatsoever if you can’t get hold of it for the lifetime of your product.
Experienced designers look at more than just the technical appropriateness of the components they select. As well as the cost, they take into account availability and where the component is in its life cycle. Except in rare cases, they don’t select components that are likely to become obsolete soon. They will also consider how long it will take for sourced components to actually show up — short lead times are obviously preferable — and how stable the supply chain is. COVID taught us all that supply chains can be fragile.
This part of the product design is a balancing act which carries on into production. We will sometimes recommend buying a production run’s worth of crucial components very early in the design process to mitigate any potential supply issues. The reassurance of knowing that you won’t have any problems getting hold of that component is often worth the up-front investment of purchasing them.
Another potential pitfall that even experienced designers can fall foul of is forgetting to Design For Manufacturability (DFM). This is less of an issue while prototyping for a variety of reasons, but right from the start we keep in mind how and where a PCB will be made. If our clients have a preferred manufacturer, we will get their design rules to ensure that whatever we design can be made using their processes. Otherwise we will work with the client to select a manufacturer, often someone whose design rules we are already familiar with.
DFM goes beyond just making sure your components aren’t too close together and your tracks aren’t so narrow that they can’t be etched, though. Different manufacturers have different rules for what they will do normally. They also have different rules that they are prepared to flex if other constraints demand it, for a price of course. Our hardware designers prefer to talk to manufacturers early in the design process, and keep talking to them throughout it.
The last pitfall our AI output identified was inadequate risk assessment, specifically in terms of neglecting risk management tools. Right from the start of scoping a project we consider potential risks in developing a product and how to create a design that will minimise them. It is important to be aware and keep risk in mind throughout a project’s life cycle. As a design progresses new risks may be uncovered, and we will analyse, communicate and mitigate them as part of the development process. Indeed, the entire prototyping stage is all about examining potential risks.
Risk assessment is part and parcel of everything we do. We don’t put a great deal of stock in a lot of the formal processes to deal with risk. All too often these can turn into either ineffectual box-ticking exercises or paralyse development entirely with unrealistic demands. We think it’s more important for designers and developers to keep risk in mind at every stage, and to discuss potential risks as they are perceived before they can ever become problems. This is a point where experience matters. Your experienced engineers will have a much better idea of where to look for potential issues and how to overcome them.
Our AI prompter followed the “rule of three” in limiting the number of potential pitfalls it identified. As with scoping a project, experience has taught us to look out for more than just these hazards as we design a project. You need to select a processor that will be fast enough to do the job and large enough to fit the firmware. If you are using cloud or cellular communications, what will be the data transfer costs? How will users interact with the device? The black art of EMC testing is always something to bear in mind. How hot will the electronics run, particularly if the enclosure is small? These are just a few of the points we consider from the very early stages of the design process.
We don’t claim to be infallible or have an exhaustive list of what issues can arise during product development. Electronic design can always throw up quirks you had never imagined. The important thing is to watch for them, analyse them when they crop up, and figure out how to mitigate or avoid them. That’s a large part of the art of product design.