Categories: Creativity

What is Concept Design?

Concept design is the first stage of the Product (Industrial) Design process. The function of this process is to generate a diverse set of simple concepts by allowing ideas to flow freely. While so much of the New Product Development process is dictated by deadlines, budget, and other inflexible practicalities, concept design allows the design team flexibility and freedom to explore outside-of-the-box ideas along with more practical ideas. Once all the concepts are generated, the team can step back and determine which concepts they like best, the feasibility of each idea and make modifications for a second round of more complex concepts.

Let’s take a broad look at andesigns’ Concept Design process. While exact processes vary from firm to firm, most follow a general direction, our’s is divided into three parts:

Research, Brainstorm, and Ideation

Every project has a beginning. For our New Product Development (NPD) services we begin by brainstorming in order to reach an in-depth understanding of our client’s requirements and how to achieve them. Once we’re all on the same page, the team then conducts extensive research to devise the most practical and efficient development process.

Design Refinement

From here our skilled design team generates a variety of hand drawn concepts that further translate our clients vision. We keep an open dialogue with our clients – updating them every step of the way. This allows us to accommodate any appropriate changes that may occur throughout the product development.

Final 2D Drawing

After reviewing these hand drawn design concepts we work with our clients to extract the features that best exhibit their vision. From here we produce a final deliverable 2D rendering. Our clients are then ready to proceed to the next phase of product development, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Modeling.

Our team created a video overview of our Concept Design process, check it out here. If you’re curious about the rest of our process, you can read more about it on our services page.

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