3 ways medical device sketching helps the design process
Sketching plays an important role as a tool or skill in the industrial design process. It’s an essential way to visualize ideas and draft basic layouts of the design for each direction chosen. It’s also the quickest way to communicate with clients and engineers without requiring a prototype or 3D rendering. Medical device sketching can bring many details into discussion as well as convey innovation beyond the actual device.
In this blog I list several fundamental functions of sketching in the design process:
- Quick Concept Creating
Sketching is an excellent tool to explore concepts quickly. During brainstorming, sketching can help record or visualize your ideas simultaneously, without even using your computer. Moreover, medical device sketching can also record ideas that jump into your brain anytime.
These sketches show how we used sketches to explore design options for the handheld controller of a medical device. We were trying to find a balance of part split and the best way to build up the function modules. Sketches can easily present many different potential design possibilities. Many color and texture details are explored during the sketching process.
- Communication and Approval
It’s essential to stay on the same page with a client (internal or external) during the new product development stage. Sketching is a very quick and efficient tool to present thumbnails or compositions to clients and get approval for direction without draining massive amounts of time. Medical device sketching can also build a bridge between design and engineering when we need to investigate a problem or explore potential solutions.
During the engineering process, designers use sketches to archive the geometric form of the design and to communicate ideas between designers and mechanical engineers. At StarFish, sketching also acts as an analysis tool that diagrams the basic component layout at the beginning of a project and simulates the design before CAD works.
- Human Factor Exploration
Sketching can help analysis and provide a clear and visualized route map for human factors and ergonomics research. When it comes to medical device design, sketching helps designers work closely with the users (including doctors, surgeons and technicians) to identify and solve potential problems by showing all of the key design features.
By varying the fidelity of sketches, they can be an integral part of all stages of human factor research. These sketches were used to explore possible interactions between human and device. Their flexibility allows sketches to increase access and support the thinking process, while communicating ideas to other engineers.
Conclusion
By using sketching in the medical products design process you can save an enormous amount of time, especially as more digital sketching methods are implemented during the design process. At StarFish, medical device sketching is our most effective tool to help clients visualize how their ideas might look like as a fully realized product. Sketching also creates an effective communication channel among designers, clients, engineers and users to keep everyone on the same page.
Danian Yang is StarFish Medical Industrial Designer with experience in product and manufacturing. Skilled in creating and directing corporate and new product designs, his sketches are valued by clients and development team members. This is his first StarFish blog.
Images: StarFish Medical