Episode 4 - PROTOTYPE (how can it go this wrong)

You have the idea, but now it needs to be made into a prototype.

What does that actually mean? Where can I go to get it done? How do I get it done?

Episode four is another step along the inventing process—prototyping.

I use an actual idea that was made into a product—all the right ways and the wrong ways that i continue to encounter.

Inventing & designing is not easy; there are very few shortcuts, but YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF!

This podcast captures the very trials one goes through to get a product out to the public market.

Contact: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
So tell me if you've heard thisone before. I got all these ideas,
millions of dollars worth of ideas,but every time I start to make
them, I can't figure out howto make them. I try, and
I try. It's just not fair, Jack, how come you can do
it but I can't seem to beable to What am I doing wrong?

(00:24):
Actually, I doubt you're doing anythingwrong. You just haven't gone far enough
yet. I'm your host, JackCourage, and this is the thirty year
Overnight Sensation podcast. This podcast isabout being an inventor and actually designing and
inventing something. It's rough. I'man inventor, not an on air personality.

(00:47):
You'll never see me on TV becauseI'm a squinner. I squint a
lot. Poor vision. Also,this podcast is not a front for a
subscription service, a back in intoa development firm or some company that tries
to generate money off of your ideas. Inventing and designing is not easy.

(01:07):
There are very few shortcuts, butyou can do it. You're also,
I hope you can tell this isa conversation, not a class. If
you're a novice inventor and want tobe an inventor, These are the very
trials one goes through to get theirproduct out to the public market. Episode
four, How can it go thiswrong? Making the perfect prototype? Actually,

(01:33):
it's easy to get frustrated and giveup a little bit too easy.
Making prototypes are fun and disappointing atthe very same time. Listening to people,
most times it appears they gave upway too soon and didn't explore all
their possibilities, leave no stone unturned, so that when you lose, you
lose big. And unfortunately, sometimesyou just lose big. If you're an

(01:59):
inventor, which I am one ofthose people who thinks you either are or
you are not. You got toput the prototype aside, suffer for a
bit, then go back at it, maybe with another idea, always thinking
you may still go back to thefirst idea, because see, you can't
help it. You want better,you want more, and it pisses you

(02:23):
off when you can't get it.And that really describes me quite a bit,
unfortunately, and I think it.I think it describes quite a lot
of inventors as a matter of fact, because underneath, at least for me,
I'm quietly seething just under the surfaceon the stupidity and then why can't

(02:44):
I get okay? So let mebring you up to speed. A big
company wants a new idea that nobodyhas. I've talked to the staff and
now I have zeroed in on thatidea, and now it's a true new
idea. But I'm not going toknow if it works until I make some
prototypes, and that will be costly. They are always costly. So where

(03:10):
do you start with prototypes? Thequestion is like asking how much water is
in the Atlantic Ocean, although Ithink somebody's probably figured that one out.
The easy answer is that it dependson what you're going to sell and how
complicated it will be to produce.But nowadays you have the Internet to find
area associations that make things for aprice. They are out there, but

(03:35):
you have to put in the workand find them. It's not always an
association, by the way. Itcould just be a group or somebody that's
making something that looks kind of likewhat you're doing. They may already have
an inside track, not on youridea, but in the general sense,
and you can start from there onwho can fabricate what and then work out
But you gotta put in the workfor my big company idea. I was

(04:00):
ahead of the game, which ismore than usual. I knew I was
making a head covering that needed nomold, no plastics, and I wasn't
going to need an engineer to drawthis up. This was going to be
a cut and sow project in whichI was going to need a seamstress with
a lot of patience. I foundher by the way. She's very patient.

(04:23):
I mean, I pay her,but she's a jewel pam. Thanks
a lot. Now, right now, you might be saying, hey,
I don't need a seamstress. I'mgonna make a toy. I need a
mold. Stop right there. Nomatter what you need, it is always
where you start. For every ideaI have had, I developed it from

(04:47):
items that I've purchased at a Walgreens, a Walmart, or a sewing store,
or all of them. The reasonbeing is that years ago I had
a product that needed to be drawnup by engineer, then mill, then
molded, then sewn. I wentto Great Links to find a few graphic
design friends to get it drawn outweeks and expenses that I didn't have.

(05:14):
Finally, I took the drawing tothe engineer and he said the funniest things.
I still laugh about. You overdidit. Why didn't you just make
it as close as you could andI will take care of the rest.
That's what you're paying me for.Well, that was what I was paying
him for. But I was afraidto look unprepared. I guess on hindsight

(05:38):
that was a good lesson that taughtme very early. And I was also
a scout, so I knew howto sew, at least for the first
time, and every idea since I'vetried to make each idea in some form
or fashion by using standard materials thatI have found in American chain stores.

(05:59):
You might say, come on,Jack, my idea is totally different.
Well maybe, but maybe things aremade here that are similar to that.
Why you ask because as of today, shamefully, most products are made overseas,
and they are made by the thousands. So if you can find something

(06:23):
already made that has similar aspects,it doesn't have to be the exact same,
but similar aspects, there's a goodchance your product can be made overseas
without too many problems. For me, the prototype process is a crazy time
in the life of your idea.The closer you can get, the idea

(06:44):
to being made using everyday items.The easier it will be for someone to
make it for real because you havesomething tangible and real in front of them.
Back to my head covering, Ihad interviewed a lot of people and
I knew what was out there,and truthfully, none of the present day
manufacturers had it, even in theslightest The need these employees described just wasn't

(07:12):
there. So I started with theclosest item out there, a common nylon
do rag. The present day doorag has one property that present day hairnets
and most bonnets do not have.It's the strapping you put on the doo
rag and the strapping anchors the dowrag down and that baby is going nowhere.

(07:38):
So this brings up a flaw inthe standard hairnet and bonnet. If
you have long hair beads in yourweave or dreadlocks, it is a constant
everyday fight to keep your hairnet onas you're working due to the weight of
the hair. The bonnet is betterthan the hairnet, and like the doo

(07:58):
rag, it has draws strings.You can pull them tight, but there's
not always enough support due to theweight of the hair and the beads inside.
The bonnet is very large and round, and in most cases it's not
something can be worn under a hator helmet. Okay, glad we got
through all that. I was gettingbored. So guess what My first prototype

(08:22):
looked like? Half de rag,half bonnet and it almost worked. See,
it took prototype one to realize thatthe idea was working, but not
in that form. Before I wasthrough with my idea, I had gone
through seven rounds of ideas before Igot something right just to test. And

(08:43):
that adds to another thing about prototypes. Testers. These need to be people
to understand their role. This productcannot have a picture taken or put on
the internet at any cost, oryou will not be able to patent that
idea if that's what you're really lookingto do. Also, the inventor cannot

(09:05):
be the tester. You're too close. You'd miss it. I miss it.
Every time I hear from a tester, they enlighten me to something that
I didn't even think of. Oneof the first things that you should think
about is to allow the tester totell you what they like and they don't
like. I try never to letthem know what I'm thinking. First,

(09:26):
I hand it to them. Itell them the overall idea, and then
I want them just to try itand then get back to me. Believe
me, you'll find out your errorspretty quick since the testers will have the
same type of complaints. They're blind, they don't know what the other testers

(09:46):
doing, so when you have aproblem, you find out pretty darn quickly.
At the early stages of testing,to get the prototype right, I
would give the product to the personfor the We can remind them no pictures.
Once you get down to the finalprototypes, you cannot and I can't

(10:07):
even stress this enough, you cannotlet them out of your sight because if
there's just one form of a publicdisplay, that could be the end of
your patent. So with the firstthree versions, the testers struggled getting their
hair into the back part into thepocket. I was using fishnet on the
inside, and that got caught upin the beads in their hair, and

(10:31):
when they had to pull it outor pull it down, it wouldn't stay
on because it kept getting tangled inthere. What helped me as the designer
the most is that I took alot of pictures of each tester and why
the design failed. And remember witheach failing, you have to analyze it

(10:52):
again and again from different views,then send it back to the seamstress with
new instructions to take it apart andremake it in the act new way that
you saw the problem from the pastmistake. I tried draw strings, snaps,
folds on the inside of the design. Plus I had big bags,

(11:13):
small bags, shallow bags, deepbags. I'm skipping ahead because this part
is maddening. But for one product, my testing took six months to Okay,
now here's the crusher. I hadfinally gotten it right where at the
final round it's finished. Everybody kindof seemed happy till I made the final

(11:37):
adjustments and I'm ready to go filethe patent. First call in the morning,
my lead tester, she's great,she said it works. I'm like,
okay, because I could kind oftell him the tone of her voice.
She said the design is great,but she had a problem. I'm

(12:00):
like, oh boy, she saidit made her head too hot. I'm
like, what I made out theexact materials that everybody said they wanted.
Every one of my testers came back. They said the design was perfect.
And these guys don't know each other, but each one of them said it
made their head too hot. Man, I gotta tell you I was crushed.

(12:28):
I thought I was at the endall that money spent on months of
back and forth to the seamstress,reworking the idea, all of it,
and the final product was not goingto work. And that complaint hadn't been
looked at by the competitors either.The present bonnet used in work had the

(12:50):
same problem for working everything but thehair net made their heads hot, but
the hair that didn't hold up theirhair, so it didn't work either.
After having a meltdown and taken acouple of days off, I started up
again a few days later. Okay, what did they say? It was

(13:11):
too hot? But in every interviewevery worker said they wore a dow rag
to keep the oils in their hairfrom drying up at night. As I
reviewed every note I had taken onevery interview, I was able to address
the flaw in my logic. Theyall spoke of the dow rag as their
favorite item to keep the oils intheir hair and hold their hair together in

(13:37):
the exact way, but most ofthem were using it to sleep. And
that saw the answer and made asecond great sales point that I wasn't even
expecting. You may get hot whenyou sleep, but you get hotter when
you work, and if that isin front of a stove, it's even
worse. Now, at this point, I was using an industry material that

(14:05):
all do rags used, with asmall hold fishnet bag on the inside of
the back of the neck. Theoutside was a standard do rag material,
so I immediately changed to an antimicrobial, very light, very small hold mesh.

(14:26):
It was light enough to breathe yetstrong enough not to tear. But
as what always happens now that Ichanged the material, the inner bag part
started to droop, and that wasgoing to be a huge problem. So
now I'm almost like back to squareone. Now I have the right material,
but design is failing. Crap,but fear not being a team from

(14:54):
the early eighties, we used tosay I had an idea, so realizing
the drawstrings and the snaps never workedon the inside because they were kind of
hard to operate behind the head wherethe fishnet had some give. But now
since I wasn't using that material,I had to figure out how to stop

(15:16):
the bag from droop and pleats likeall my pants in the eighties, everything
ad pleats. I started with onepleat. It didn't test so well,
but then I added two pleats.That's it. I didn't need a zipper,
I didn't need a drawstring, noelastic. I just need to add

(15:37):
some simple pleats. So after monthsof back and forth, which was done
all here in the States. Forthat I was extremely lucky. I had
the final final design, a verylightweight, almost springy mesh material. Do
rag with a long tail, andinside the back tail is an open pleated

(16:03):
pocket. Easiest stuff your hair intoand then tie down with the tie straps,
keeping all hair immobilized and covered.I added an edged, super strong
surge stitch to the outside him tokeep it from tearing. And I put
a label very low in the outsideof the pocket so would never itch the

(16:26):
wear on the back of the neck. Boy, if there's ever a time
where you go, WHOA, Thatwas it. The principal design of the
prototype was ready to go to thepatent lawyer, and I now had something
for women of the food service industry, or so I thought. So.
That was a great feeling up tothat last statement, or so I thought.

(16:52):
So until them next time, whenyou're thinking of ideas, never settle,
and when you're struggle on like Idid a lot in this episode,
I mean really struggling, just staythe course. Keep in mind that's when
most people give up and quit.There is always another way. I'm your

(17:15):
host, Jack Courage the thirty yearOvernight Sensation. Stay at it,