Wed, Nov 9 2011

Production Update

By Invention Ambassadors at 2:00 pm

This week, Andrew gives us an update about Contour and Thor. Did he choose them because their names rhymed? We think so.

CONTOUR

Contour is a perfect example of how Quirky’s working relationship with the inventor is one of our greatest assets. In Tracie Beer’s original submission she created a prototype that, “was designed to hold the halter top or dress in place while also filling out the body of the garment to prevent wrinkles.” It was simple, easy to use, and solved a problem. Her original prototype was a starting point for our design team. They built on Tracie’s idea by incorporating additional well-designed features for a complete “hanger system”.

When Contour reached the quoting phase of our production process, the operations team reported that the proposed QDS design needed to be refined. One of the major issues with the proposed design was the amount of material used in the overall product. Between the normal triangular hanger, the body hanger, and the clips that attached those parts together, the price quotes that we were getting back from our manufacturers were way too high!

Another issue with the proposed design was partial flocking. The purpose of flocking a hanger is to have felt-like material on the outer surface, causing more friction, holding the garments in place. QDS originally thought that not flocking the whole hanger and only having the felt material in spots where the hanger needed it most would reduce the price tremendously, but it did not. The operations team also learned that the production time for this hanger system would be much longer than anticipated. All of this feedback was given to our design team, and they went back to the drawing board.

After thinking it over at length, the design team felt like this product had become overcomplicated and strayed too far from Tracie’s original prototype. We communicated our manufacturing issues with Tracie, and she was more than happy to help us. The design team sent prototypes to her for review. Because of her extensive input, we created a final design that would be faster to produce, lower material costs, and still offer the best solution to hanging a wrinkle-free halter top or dress.


THOR

When our engineering team examined the design for Thor, they found an issue with the architecture of the product. The proposed design incorporated a snow brush with nylon bristles. Under testing, this snow brush feature did not match up to the rest of the product. In every user-scenerio tested, a back-and-forth motion was used for scraping, like a plow. With a snow brush, the user would apply a sweeping motion to remove the snow.

Sweeping and plowing were two very different motions, and the engineers did not feel the product’s orientation was cohesive enough to include both motions. They decided to maintain a synchronous snow dozing motion and replaced the brush bristles with a sturdy, flexible rubber blade. The blade removed snow by pushing it away, off of the car, so the same effect was achieved with a more compatible motion. The trapezoidal shape created more surface area which could plow away more snow in one go. One of the unintentional advantages of using this type of rubber blade is that it also acts as a squeegee for wiping away water from the back or side windows, which the bristles would not have been able to do. This added even more value to this updated design!