So it’s official, we are in the middle of the 4th Industrial Revolution. An era of technical innovation in the areas of AI, AR and robotics to name but a few. It certainly is an exciting time to be involved in shaping the future, but it is still important not to lose sight who you are creating products for, namely the end users, buyers, or put more simply, humans.
Research and development or general innovation, helps drive the world forward at a rapid pace. During times like these the marketplace can become saturated with new products that make positive improvements to our lives, such as healthcare devices and breakthroughs that will impact our planet such as electric cars, etc. Companies who are able to operate in an agile way, who are more open to ideas, can certainly use this period to re-examine ways of doing things and possibly change direction.
In our relatively small engineering world of design and development, our actual customer is not usually the person who is going to use or get the benefit from directly using the product. So during the development cycle it is always important to pause, reflect and remember just for who the product has been designed for, namely our customers’ customer.
