Drop Gear Design

prototyping

Image of a man refining a plastic prototype with a Dremel tool.

Validating your product through prototyping is one of the most important steps in the product development process. For us, it’s also one of the most fun parts. We apply a blend of the latest rapid prototyping technologies with our own expert craftsmanship to transform your concept into reality.

At Drop Gear Design, we take a different approach when it comes to prototyping. We believe in the power of low-fidelity mock-ups and functional decomposition to verify that core concepts and user flows are effective before committing resources to those beautiful, fully-functional prototypes. This allows us to quickly explore and iterate on design ideas without the high cost and time investment associated with more polished prototypes. Many other design houses and prototype shops will burn time and budget developing complicated prototypes too early in the process, only to discover critical problems that could have been realized sooner, resulting in costly rework. By comparison, we use functional decomposition to break your product’s challenges down into bite-sized pieces, allowing us to conquer each issue individually. Then, we put it all back together so that when it comes time to build that stunning, working prototype to unveil at the trade show, you can be confident it’s going to work and you will get the valuable feedback that you need. In the end, our process saves you time and maximizes the value of your prototype.

Image of a workshop with workbench, organizers, toolboxes, and various equipment.

We have the facilities and expert skills to satisfy all of your prototyping needs, including a purpose-built 960 sqft workshop stocked with a variety of tools, allowing us to handle complex and large-scale builds. We also work closely with our manufacturing partners to select rapid prototyping technologies that are going to closely emulate your product’s anticipated manufacturing processes, ensuring your prototype is as realistic as possible. 

Blue zigzag

Whether you need a mechanical mock-up to validate a concept, an aesthetic model for conducting user feedback research, or a fully fledged, looks-like-works-like prototype for validation testing, we’ve got you covered.

Blue zigzag

Ready to get started?