The Novation gizmos are all items that we designed for ourselves ‘cause we wanted them. They work and are fun and useful, but because we are using them ourselves, they are all handmade prototypes and not currently designed as consumer products. To share them with you, we need to:
- Get the costs down through modern manufacturing. It is fun to build the products by hand, but it takes time, and we know time is money.
- Improve the user experience. Since we designed the prototypes, we know how to properly use the gadgets, but they are not always intuitive – so we need work on user interfaces, instructions and such; and,
- Improve the packaging to be more rugged and more attractive. Hey, don’t get the impression we don’t do solid designs…we do. For example, the prototype of Shot Light™ has been out in the weather all summer… through all sorts of crazy heat and lots of rain. It still works just fine. A data acquisition system we just prototyped was on a boat that unfortunately sank; we recovered it while ignoring shouts about water moccasins, dried it out, and the system works like new-we did not lose a bit of data.
The point is, the gadgets work great, but they are prototypes. How do we move them to products? We thought we’d give Kickstarter a try. We feel our products definitely appeal to the “crowd”, and Kickstarter will provide us with the funding needed to move our fun and useful toys into the mass market. So please look for our campaign(s) (and consider funding them). We’ll keep you posted with details and campaign launch info.