New Product Development Teams Bring Prototypes to Life
One of our busiest days this spring came courtesy of BADM 525, New Product Development, taught by Professor Hayden Noel at Gies College of Business. Student teams arrived with designs in hand and left with prototypes they could pass around a table.
Six Teams, Six Very Different Products
The best part of a New Product Development class visit is the range. Within a single afternoon, our printers were running:
- A contoured sleep mask
- A collapsible tote bag frame
- A compartmentalized dashboard organizer
- A protective helmet form
- A portable charger housing
- A two-chamber bottle concept
Because our lab holds about 21 people comfortably, the class was split into two groups: a short overview session first, then hands-on lab time in shifts.
What Prototyping Actually Looks Like
Not every print succeeded on the first attempt, and that is worth saying out loud. The helmet failed partway through and was re-run. The tote bag frame failed on one Ultimaker and was moved to another. One team's model came in at 451 grams, a genuinely large print that tied up a machine for hours.
This is the real value of prototyping inside a course. A rendering looks finished; a printed part tells you the wall is too thin, the hinge does not clear, or the whole thing is heavier than the concept implied. Teams learned more from the parts that failed than from the ones that came out clean.
From Physical to Immersive
Two weeks later the class met again for a session on virtual and augmented reality in product design, where students could view models at full scale in a headset before committing to another print. Seeing a design as a physical object and as an immersive model covers two very different kinds of feedback.
Teaching a course that could use prototyping support? Get in touch to talk about a lab session for your class.