Pillar Product Design has a long history working on road bike and mountain bike components. The team has worked with amazing bike companies like Girvin, Noleen and K2 Bikes.

We are currently are working on a new design for components used on commuter and travel bikes for a local outfit. It is exciting to be back working and developing bike components. If we are riding or designing bikes components, It truly is a passion for the Pillar team.

Some of the main challenges we face with the current project in the product development cycle an ability to create a system that works with standard established components in the bike industry. The bike market used to be extremely specialized and some of that still holds true to date. But the fact is as it relates to bike components there are specific dimensions that hold true and affect 95% of the bike products on the market. The more universal you can make the components the easier is it will be accepted at retail. Specific and custom system often are lost at market UN-less there is a massive benefit to jump ship and switch to a completely unique stand alone system.

Pillar Product Design worked directly with DGA to develop the Zipbuds product. We started with an idea and a napkin sketch idea and took it from there. We spent almost 4  to 6 months developing this idea and another 6 months product testing and working out the production bugs. This amount of sweat equity and effort is worth it once you see the final finished product. We are excited to see how this new product will be received by the audio market. DGA has done an excellent job on viral marketing in the high-end audio markets. They have excellent distribution and have spent wisely in the over-all development of this product. It has been and honor to work with this small team to develop this amazing product. Check out the video of this product it is both brilliant and hilarious.

Check out the video of the product on vimeo: Zipbuds

 

The proof is in the pudding. At Pillar Product Design we stand out from many other product design studios for the the fact that we back what we design and submit to our clients. With over 85% of our clients that are looking for product design, prototype and production assistance services we are often faced with the challenges of proving the concept and making physical units functional, cost effective and manufacturable. We pride our selves for our ability to address and take responsibility for the manufacturability, materials, production cost constraints up front early in the product development process, before our clients make the big spend on physical samples or production tooling. Of course during the early stages of the development process(brain storming stage) we may come up with ideas that may or may not fit into the mold of manufacturing or cost constraints. We often will take 15 to 20 ideas and filter down to 3 to 5 main concepts. Like many phases of the project, we like the client to be deeply involved in this part of the particular process. It is key that we make decisions based off of a solid foundation. It is our goal to evaluate, research and explore the options and new technology that relates to a particular idea or concept. We use a process known as product mapping  that allows us to filter down concepts and ideas into there basic essential pieces, parts and characteristics. 

Once we have a clear direction on a product’s shape and function, we then will build Solid Works 3D CAD models to gain and understanding of how the parts interact and interface with each other and how the individual component work as a complete assembly. We investigate production process and materials to determine how these parts will be made. At this point in time we usually with have a rapid prototype built before we start to dig deep into the details of each piece. This allows to gain an understanding of scale proportions, ergonomics and functionality.

This process goes back and forth until the assembly meets the necessary requirements set. Pending complexity this can be a 3 to 5 week process or 1 week process. It is so critical that a complete understanding of the environment, load path and requirements are determined and understood. Also it is key that once the physical sample is built that a complete set of testing is followed up to quantify if the product is meeting the necessary requirements.