Digital research
Examine existing designs, photographs, and technical documentation to understand how a similar problem has been solved.
Prototyping
How research, hands-on experiments, and product teardowns help engineers learn from existing solutions and find new approaches to difficult problems.
The quick take
A new product can benefit from mechanisms and approaches already used elsewhere. A similar product study helps engineers understand those solutions and discover new ways to tackle a difficult problem.
Examine existing designs, photographs, and technical documentation to understand how a similar problem has been solved.
Purchase a product and experiment with it. Sometimes its useful function is completely different from its intended purpose.
Disassemble and document a product to understand its mechanisms, internal arrangement, and how it works.
For a compact electronic device, we might examine another product’s internal speaker cavity or antenna arrangement. Seeing how those details work can help change our approach.
The goal isn’t necessarily to find an identical product. A mechanism in a completely different industry may accomplish a similar function. One clever mechanism or design detail can introduce a new approach when development has stalled.
Not finding a similar product can feel discouraging. Sometimes broader research reveals a useful mechanism; other times, additional experimentation and original engineering are necessary.
The AVA Labs approach
We conduct similar product studies throughout development to learn from existing engineering, unlock new ideas, and avoid reinventing solutions that already exist.
One of the closest things to a life hack in hardware development is something we call a similar product study.
These studies can be absolute game changers, especially when we’re struggling to solve a difficult engineering problem.
A founder’s product may be entirely new, but that doesn’t mean every mechanism inside it needs to be invented from scratch.
Often, another industry has already solved a very similar problem.
At AVA Labs, we conduct similar product studies throughout development as new challenges arise.
Sometimes this involves digital research, examining existing designs, photographs, and technical documentation.
Other times, we’ll purchase a product and physically experiment with it, sometimes using it for something completely different from its intended purpose.
We may also perform a complete teardown, disassembling and documenting the product to understand how it works.
For example, when developing a compact electronic device, we might study the internal speaker cavity or antenna arrangement of another product.
These details aren’t always obvious, and seeing how another manufacturer solved them can provide tremendous insight.
But the real value goes beyond simply finding an existing solution.
Similar product studies can unlock inspiration, introduce entirely new approaches, and help engineers break through problems that have stalled development.
Sometimes seeing one clever mechanism or small design detail is enough to completely change our approach.
There’s one trap founders should avoid, however.
Not finding a similar product can sometimes feel discouraging, especially when development is already difficult.
But the goal isn’t necessarily to find an identical product. Sometimes we need to look in completely different industries for mechanisms that accomplish a similar function.
And occasionally, there simply isn’t an existing solution we can adapt. That’s when additional experimentation and original engineering become necessary.
Similar product studies are one of the most powerful tools we use at AVA Labs. They help us learn from existing engineering, unlock new ideas, and avoid spending time and money reinventing solutions that already exist.