Imagine, specify, plan, innovate

The first stage in idea is the definition of its requirements based on customer, company, market and regulatory bodies’ viewpoints. From this specification of the products major technical parameters can be defined. Parallel to the requirements specification the initial concept design work is carried out defining the aesthetics of the product together with its main functional aspects. For the Industrial Design, Styling, work many different media are used from pencil and paper, clay models to 3D CAD Computer-aided industrial design software.

In some concepts, the investment of resources into research or analysis-of-options may be included in the conception phase - e.g. bringing the technology to a level of maturity sufficent to move to the next phase. However, life-cycle engineering is iterative. It is always possible that something doesn't work well in any phase enough to back up into a prior phase - perhaps all the way back to conception or research. There are many examples to draw from.