In the final team project in Product Design (taught my Wharton School professor Karl Ulrich), each team must design and prototype a consumer-oriented product targeted towards the entire University of Pennsylvania community, mainly college students. The products of the class later compete in the semester-end Product Design Fair where students and faculty vote on the product they are most likely to buy at the marketed price.

Rule #1: Solve a specific problem.
The class introduced students to the end-to-end product design development framework beginning with initial idea generation to concept screening and selection and finally to actual product engineering, testing, and commercial launch. Each student was asked to identify 10 opportunities (read: not product ideas). All students in the class then ranked these opportunities, which formed the basis for concept generation or hypothetical solutions that satisfied existing consumer needs. This ensured that all products focused on solving real, current problems.

clipIT was born to solve the problem of easing poster hanging (very common activity for college students). We first looked at existing solutions (sticky tac, tape, push pins) and identified customer needs (e.g. do not damage poster, keeps poster flat, easy to use, cheap, etc.) based on conducted surveys and first-hand customer interviews. From there, several concepts were generated to satisfy those needs ranging from a transparent full-size poster protector to the corner clip mechanism. We then built a quick prototype which we showed customers in follow-up interviews to observe their interaction with the product (e.g. how they approached opening the clip, how long it took them, their facial expressions during the process, their initial thoughts on what the prototype did, etc.). We refrained from doing a lot of explaining in order to assess how easy or intuitive the prototype was to use. The result of this screening process was the birth of clipIT.

The final design of clipIT featured a one-piece triangular shaped piece that easily opened and closed onto a poster corner. In addition, we supported two types of wall attachments as we found that many of our customers were concerned about potential damage to the wall: 1) a sticky adhesive (resembling existing sticky tac) and 2) a push pin mechanism.

Ideally, we would manufacture clipIT via injection molding. However, because we were not producing in large group, after much brainstorming and discussion, our group decided to use magnetics in order to simulate the "clipping mechanism." Not only would the magnetics hold the poster in place but they would also be very easy to use.

In order to manufacture a more sophisticated prototype, we drew a more detailed assembly drawing of the product, breaking clipIT into individual components.

The two triangular pieces clip together because of the magnetic strip running along the two straight edges. The black traingular piece fits in the back with the clear one in front.

In order to determine the appropriate retail price for our product, we used a target costing approach by measuring all relevant costs of manufacturing each part using injection modling (in ideal world). We then added on our desired margin, accounting for the cost to the wholesaler. Our group eventually concluded that we wanted to take the "Walmart" strategy and offer an attractive price (given that our target market of college students are very cheap!).

The Design Fair Sell Day went very well. While our team generated the most sales of the class, we were not the most profitable (came in second). In hindsight, we realized that we should have charged much more given that students were not as price sensitive since they were merely voting for a product rather than actually buying it with real money.