Lean electronic prototyping: Prove your assumptions

Conventionally, when developing electronic devices, companies tend to focus on developing a prototype hardware as the first stage. This is a complicated and expensive strategy that consumes large quantities of energy and money in a design up-front.

A complete electronics development studio, open source only!

There are alternatives however. Today there are many open source circuit boards to choose from off the shelf, that suits almost any need for an embedded system. These boards are extremely cheap, and the tools for them are almost always open source, and thus, also free.

The maker movement and DIY (Do It Yourself) trend has brought embedded development to be a serious hobby alternative for anyone... even kids. And there isn't just toy functionality offered on these cheap hobbyist boards, it is real computer power and connectivity there, such as USB, Bluetooth, internet working, motor control. There are even circuit boards meant to be sewn into your clothes with conducting thread! All from the price of 20$ USD or so. In combination with mobile phones, cloud services and integration with other systems, these systems form a very powerful tool for innovation.

One of the most eye catching applications is off course the home 3D printers that has started to pop up in the market. For about 600$ USD, you get your own mechanical factory! The CAD-tools used for these are also often free and/or open source. With the 3D printers you can manufacture mechanical parts for your invention with very small means. This becomes a very important missing piece in the prototyping process that often tends to become the most expensive step when developing the prototype.

With the right prototyping strategy, a company can focus on developing quite advanced Minimum Viable Products that they actually can test in the hands of a real customer. This will give a much more trust worthy feedback, and will help the company to eliminate waste in the development process.

The sad truth is that the most important properties of a system are the least costly to develop. Many electronic devices are completely depending on a good the user experience, which in most cases are implemented in software. I'm not saying that the industrial design of a device is unimportant, on the contrary, but in the development of a minimum viable product, or prototype, you should focus on proving your assumptions regarding the customers needs/desires. To do this, the shortest and cheapest way is often to realize the solution in software. With the use of a lean prototyping strategy, the trade off between software functionality and industrial design can become less dramatic.

So what's the catch? ...

Well, there are off course down sides of these methods. To face the truth, the quality of the open source tools often leave a lot to wish for. Setting up a development environment based on open source CAN be done, but it takes it's fair amount of googling and experimenting to get it running. The documentation is often in a poor state, or none existing. This puts a big burden on the developers involved and the project becomes a lot more dependent on a high level of skills of the team members.

I would like to point out though, that during my time as a devloper and project manager in embedded systems projects, I cannot recall one single occasion when I have received any useful support from a company we have bought "closed source" tools from. So the increase in risk, is probably leveled out by the probability that you would actually get what you pay for, when using proprietary closed source software.

So keep it lean; focus on the customer, eliminate waste, keep the iterations short.