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You may have heard somewhere that Silicon Valley is a breeding ground of innovation, technology, and sophistication. Most startups here take one thing and iterate through near-infinity on that one thing until it’s the most perfect, elegant, and uber-functional “one thing” you can find. And often the most expensive. Trouble is, not everyone is necessarily […]

The pre-production phase of the hardware product development cycle encompasses the commonly mentioned EVT (Engineering Verification Test), DVT (Design Verification Test), and PVT (Production Verification Test) segments. There’s a common misconception that each segment denotes a pre-production build on a rudimentary assembly line, however the T in each of the “(X)VT”s stands for Test, signifying […]

The week’s top hardware news. December 30th, 2015 Products The Sound Reactive Mask Just in time for New Years, Canadian startup Outline Montréal launched their first Kickstarter campaign for a wild party animal mask. Harnessing the potential of sound reactive technology, they created a luminous jaguar mask that translates musical beats into light. Translation: a […]

The week’s top hardware news. December 17th, 2015 Products Like Headphones for Your Eyes Funded on Kickstarter in 2014, Avegant’s Glyph video headset is ready to go into mass production. We’re mentioning it because, for $699, it’s a device that gets close to the VR experience by projecting images directly to your retina by using […]

Foamcore (also known as foamboard) is a lightweight building material that typically consists of a foam inner layer covered on top and bottom by paper. It’s cheap, easy-to-use and can quickly create scale models. There are 2 main applications for working with foamcore: 1. Early user testing Working with foamcore makes sense for applications where […]

A Look Back at 2015 This has been a year of incredible growth here at Fictiv, one we’re proud to share with all of you. In the past year, we’ve printed over 10,000 parts, continued to build out the platform, written a ton of content, and so much more — none of which could have […]

If you’ve ever watched ABC’s Shark Tank, you may have heard one of the investors say something like, “I think you’re really smart and have a great idea, but you’re an inventor — not an entrepreneur.” Whether you like Shark Tank as a form of entertainment or not, I think the seperation of these two […]

好的产品开发一个迭代的过程ess (James Dyson famously made 5127 failed prototypes before he delivered a working Cyclone bagless vacuum). But while an iterative process is the most successful hardware development strategy, prototyping hardware can be expensive and time-consuming. So to get the most value out of each prototype, you need to aggressively […]

This holiday I’m looking forward to digging into some of the books I’ve been meaning to read, but just haven’t found the time to read them. I’m sure my fellow engineers can relate! My picks touch on some key design-thinking principles (yes — there’s value to understanding design principles as an engineer!) + 2 awesome engineering biographies and a visual exploration of classic products.. torn […]

The week’s top hardware news. December 11th, 2015 Products World’s Safest Drone Still don’t know how to tackle drone safety? A Belgian startup just came up with the solution: make a drone like a giant flying marshmallow! Fleye can hover and fly about a room all on its own without injuring anyone while taking their […]