Coming Soon: Virtual Reality

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Will Virtual Reality ever become something real?

The cats at Novation have been involved with virtual reality and related technologies for years but have never seen it take off as a mass marketed product – will it ever happen? Supplementing virtual reality are technologies with terms like augmented reality and mixed reality. Investors have reportedly poured in about a billion dollars to the selective Magic Leap in Florida. So even though ESPN and HBO have backed off from 3D broadcasts, many people see such technologies as the future.

We’ve tried them all. We’ve used Google Glass, HoloLens, Oculus Rift and our own prototypes. We’ve worked on systems for NASA, Mercedes Benz, and the US Navy. We’ve even worked on technology on the edges of virtual reality from stereo vision telepresence and CAVEs to amusement park rides and the yellow first and ten yard line.

Our favorite so far is the Hololens…it is heavy and clunky, but works very nicely. A bit of a narrow field of view, but it is acceptable once you get used to it. We think if they move the heavy batteries and electronics to your shoulders, and focus on a light glasses, they might have something really good.

But the big news re: Novation…James Cameron wants to make Avatar sequels that provide 3D without glasses. We hope he hasn’t been spying on us. The system we are working on is exactly that….We’re developing a walk-around, high resolution display system. It is not very expensive but is a bit awkward for now – we’ll keep working on it, don’t worry. One day you might have an amazing full 3D experience right in the middle of your living room.

After that we might concentrate on Smell-O-Vision.

Why Failure Fails Us: It’s Not OK To Accept It

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At Novation, we’re entrepreneurs – every one of us stray cats. And as entrepreneurs, so often we’ve heard people tefailurell us: don’t be afraid to fail; fail
early and fail often. We smile and nod, but in reality – fail? No way! We’re not going to plan to fail. OK, OK, we know you have to plan in the event of a failure – if we should fail, now what? We know a plan is needed. But we’ll fight failure tooth and claw. We know you need to keep an eye on your plan and take corrective action so as not to fail. And we’ll do anything we can to make the corrections. But uh uh, nope – we’re not planning to fail early and often.

You know what they mean by fail early right? Well, it means it is better to fail near the beginning of the process – the design or prototype stage. Typically you will not have put in too much of an investment in time and money, so you can either drop it or go back to the proverbial drawing board without much penalty. If you fail after you’ve put in tons time and money it is a disaster. You don’t what to have to recall your products, make corrections, change tooling. It’s costly. It’s also costly to get to market and find out no one wants to pay the price of your products. That’s why you need to talk to customers, create a market, before you get too far along. Best thing to do is work hard at your design, talk to potential customers, and make sure the product will be a success…don’t fail at all. Do your design work. Do your market research. Don’t fail even at the beginning. But we admit, while we hate the term “fail early”, if you’re going to find flaws in your product or market, best to find them early on ‘cause it is so much less costly to fix it all. But don’t plan to fail. Plan on doing a great job early on so you have no failures.

So as long as you don’t plan to “fail early” it makes some sense as long if it means to look for issues ASAP and take care of them. But “fail often”? Are you kidding me? This has no redeeming value at all…well, unless it really means in the design process try out several different approaches, and examine multiple market concepts. That’s OK. That’s a legit part of the product development process. Just make sure you know it doesn’t mean it is fine to start companies, take investors’ money, and keep doing it as long as you can. You might be gaining interesting experience, but you’re losing someone’s money and time. It’s not right. Don’t fail often! It is plain wrong.

OK, so maybe we misunderstood those failure phrases a little, but hopefully you understand our issues. We’re never going into any venture where failure of the product/enterprise is considered acceptable. Never.

Ideas: Sorting Through the Haystack to Find the Gems

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needle in a haystackWhen we finish a product development brainstorming session, the cats at Novation usually have hundreds of ideas in the form of a haystack of sticky notes. Each note has a single idea on it. It feels like we went from no ideas, to too many ideas. How do we dig only the best ideas out of the stack?

  1. Get rid of the clearly silly ideas. In brainstorming, one of the rules is to put down absolutely any thought, even if it is totally unrelated and ludicrous. Such ideas are helpful during the brainstorming process because they might trigger legitimately good ones. But once the brainstorming is finished, the silly ideas can be pulled out of the haystack and abandoned.

With the brainstorming group going through the stick notes and just asking “keep or toss”, they will easily and quickly be able to pull out the silly ideas; don’t be shocked if up to half of the ideas are tossed. It’s not that unusual. Don’t worry-you’ll still have lots of ideas to evaluate.

  1. Make sure you read the notes. This very basic step is needed. In a fast brainstorming session the ideas get written down quickly and often are difficult to read, so go over each remaining note with the group and make sure it’s legible.
  2. Obtain more detail. While going through the notes ask for more detail or the reasoning behind the idea where appropriate. You don’t need a lot of detail, just enough make the idea on the sticky note more clear. Generally, you should be able to add the extra detail to the same sticky note.
  3. Put the notes in logical groups. As you are going through the notes, quite often you will see ideas that are related. Put all of those sticky notes together in groups. For example, if you are talking about transportation you may have several notes about cars, several about trains, bikes, airplanes, etc. Often the same idea will come up multiple times; this especially happens if you had several groups do the brainstorming. You can eliminate notes with the same idea, but it is a good idea to keep track of how many of the ideas were identical, because the more frequently the ideas comes up, the more likely it is to be a viable solution. Think about it.
  4. Have the experts review what’s left. If you followed the steps above, you probably have eliminated a lot of the lesser ideas and are down to a manageable number. You now should have fewer than 50% of the original haystack of notes left, and this could still total a hundred or so. But now only the serious ideas remain and they are grouped in a logical manner. It is suggested that the groups of sticky notes be recorded in a document for later reference. You may also want to make sure you know who came up with each of the ideas. There could be a true invention on those sticky notes, and you may want to file for a patent; to do so you need to know who had the original inventive idea.

At this point, you can hand the ideas to the experts for their use in the design. They’ll know what to do with the ideas, and they will thank you.

Brainstorming Your Way to Developing Your Product

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In our recent blogs we’ve been discussing how the clever cats at Novation go through the product development process. So far we’ve covered OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION (today’s world), VISION (the world we plan to create) and introduced SOLUTIONS – how we get from the old world to the new one. The SOLUTIONS phase consists of two key parts: BRAINSTORMING and what we call REFINING THE HAYSTACK.

BRAINSTORMING is a well known process that has been around for years. It is not universally accepted, but Novation finds it very effective, and we have refined our take on it which we will discuss below.

At the end of BRAINSTORMING, we end up with scores, maybe hundreds of ideas. The challenge is to go through the haystack of ideas and find the best ones… so that’s what we mean by REFINING THE HAYSTACK. We’ll discuss the refinement in the next blog entry, but for now, let us give you our small set of rules for effective brainstorming.

The project lead is typically the designated facilitator of the brainstorming session. To start, the facilitator provides background, facts, and a definition of the problem that needs to be solved. If the session goal is to come up with initial ideas for a product, the information provided in this background briefing is kept fairly broad and open-ended to allow as wide a creative field as possible. If the brainstorming session is about a specific area, such as near the end of the product development cycle, the background information is much more specific and often includes detail on form, fit and functions, which generally include specifications on functionality, performance, interfaces, size, weight, cost, regulations, and physical environment. Usually this background session takes about 10 minutes, and reference materials are often provided for use during the brainstorming.

The participants are then given the rules.

  • A specific time is set (usually 15 minutes)
  • The goal is quantity over quality
  • Say your idea out loud, write it down on the sticky note, but do not discuss or explain it
  • No criticism permitted
  • No idea is too silly or outlandish
  • All ideas must be recorded, one idea per sticky note
  • All must contribute
  • Um…that’s about it.

Sticky NotesThe facilitator can and ideally will participate too. The facilitator should encourage everyone present to participate and produce lots of ideas. Now and then the facilitator should toss in a stimulus word for people to think about like “football”, or “insects”, or “bread pudding”; such odd words often trigger new thoughts.

By the end of a 15 minute session, we’ve found that each person will usually have contributed 15 to 20 ideas. If you have ten people on the team, that could result in about 200 ideas. Granted, since we were after quantity, many of the ideas may not be useful to solve the problem at hand, but usually you only need one good idea and in a haystack of 200 or so sticky notes, you’re bound to find it.

How we sort through that haystack of ideas is the topic of the next blog.

Solutions: Getting From Opportunity to Vision

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In this entry we’ll discuss SOLUTIONS. We recently talked about OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION and then VISION as important steps in the
product development journey. Journey? Hmmm. It’s actually a pretty good analogy, so let’s ride it. In terms of a journey, OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION is the beginning and VISION is the end.

Normally you’ll start a journey at point A, and hope to arrive safely at point B. In developing a product, you start by identifying the opportunity, that’s point A. Point A is a dark, flawed place where pain and problems exist. Point B is our vision: a better world, the problem is fixed, the sun is shining, the pain is relieved and life is made better by your idea in some way.rubik-cube

But how do we get from point A to point B? That’s where the SOLUTIONS come in. Solutions provide us a path to move from A to B. Here’s a simple example. Suppose we have strong evidence that basketball players have trouble keeping track of the time left on the shot clock. Not the most important problem in the world admittedly, but a problem/opportunity nonetheless. High level basketball moves so fast the players don’t have the ability to keep track of time, even with digital shot clocks displayed all over the stadium. So this is our world at point A – players are not well aware of the shot clock. The vision for point B then should be pretty obvious…imagine a world where players know how much time is left. All we need is a solution, our road from point A to point B.

In a journey, there are many ways to get from point A to point B, and a good traveler will get out the maps (Google or otherwise), train and plane timetables, in order to consider many paths and options. Designers should do the same when considering solutions to achieve their vision. The cats at Novation believe the best way to develop solutions is to start with a brainstorming session. A simple 15 minute session can generate hundreds of ideas – some of them good.

“Some of them!” you exclaim?

Yes, that’s right….not all of the ideas are good ones. A lot of the ideas generated in brainstorming are pretty useless, but all you need is a single good solution. If you have scores of ideas to sort through it is very likely you’ll come up with the one that works to get you to your vision quickly.

In the next few blog entries, we will explain how we brainstorm so you can develop multiple solutions, and more importantly, we will discuss how to evaluate those solutions so you can find the right one for you.
Is there more than one solution to most problems?

Vision: Defining and Refining Product Ideas

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visionOnce we’ve found a potential business opportunity, an idea we think may have a market, the next thing we need is a vision. As engineers and designers, our instinct is to go right to a solution and prototype, and skip the vision. But here at Novation Tech, we take the time to do it right and look into the future to define our vision.

That’s right, we’re time travelers. Well, not exactly time travelers, but we try to envision how our idea might come to life in the future. We try to imagine in great detail, the final product. The look. The feel. As they say in design school – the form, fit and function.

We try to imagine how our customers might use our product, what functions it must perform, and how well it must perform its functions. We don’t worry about how we can make it happen yet; for the time being we assume we build it to do anything we need.

One valuable exercise is to design a one page advertisement for your future product. A sketch, a description of the product, a list of its capabilities, some specifications, and anything else you might look for if you were going to buy the product. It is a great way to define your vision.

Since you now have an idea and a vision, in the next entry we’ll discuss how you get from idea to vision.

Ideas: The First Steps on the Road to a Final Product

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ideaSeveral readers have asked how we get our ideas for products. We have several creative minds working on our team, each with their own interests and views. If left on their own, the ideas and projects would wander wildly. They would be fun and interesting – two of our goals – but we are a business and need to ensure that our research and development resources are spent wisely. So how do we herd this bunch of cats?

In this and the next couple of blog entries we will take you through the process, from idea to innovation.

The first thing we do when we want a new product is to look for pain. Ouch… that doesn’t sound good does it? But as creative designers who are also entrepreneurs, we don’t want to develop a solution looking for a problem. We want to find a real life problem (pain) first and then find a solution. Finding what makes people unhappy, frustrated, dissatisfied, finding their pet peeves, is a great place to start in developing a new product. Think about it…what really bugs you about your day to day life? Dislike your alarm clock? Hate making breakfast/your boring commute/your uncomfortable desk? Hmmm. How many people are there who feel the way you do? Probably a lot. Chances are by finding the pain, you may have uncovered an opportunity for a profit making product or two.

So begin a collection of all those observations of what annoys people, how you can make a situation better, and we’ll show you how to take those ideas to reality.

In the next entry we’ll talk about Vision.

To Patent or Not To Patent: Protecting Your Intellectual Property

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Intellectual Property is an important consideration for technology products. Here at Novation Tech, we are careful to investigate copyrights, trademarks and patents. Our designers have many patents, though they can be quite expensive to obtain. We thought it would be good to briefly discuss one aspect of patent law that is very important in terms of economics, but may not be well known — provisional patents.

The current US patent law is based on “first to file”, meaning the law gives a great advantage to the first entity (person, company) to file an idea for a particular invention with the patent office. That might sound very logical, but it could be that the first person to get an application in is not the first plego patenterson to have the idea. For example, you might have had a great idea for an invention months ago, but for one reason or another, you did not file for the patent yet. If at a later date, another person independently had the same or similar idea, but put in an application before you did, the law will favor them. Even though you had the idea first. Wow, it seems so unfair…whoever gets to the patent office first wins.

“First to file” seems especially unfair to an individual or a small business who does not have a large amount of cash to invest in a patent. In this cat’s experience-when all is said and don-it has typically cost somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 to get to the point where the patent is granted.

But here’s the good news: you can file for something called a Provisional Patent that you should be able to do on your own, will give you an official filing date, protects you for twelve months and costs in the hundreds, not in the thousands, of dollars – even if you have a patent attorney help you.

Pretty cool huh? And, frankly, if you don’t have a few hundred dollars to produce a provisional patent, you probably should not be thinking about patents; just keep it all a secret and hope no one has the same idea as you. Trade Secrets are viable and effective ways of protecting an idea – just look at the story of Coca-Cola® to be convinced.

The moral of the story is: if you feel you need patent coverage and you have a great idea, don’t delay.

You can find all you need to know and even file for a provisional patent on your own on the US government’s USPTO web site.

And to help ensure your idea has not already been patented, search here for free. You can also search a specialized Google patent site (uh huh, also free).

Prototypes vs. Finished Products: How Do We Get There?

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yellow steveThe 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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,
  3. 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.