Erdmann Design: Combining innovation with strategy

Erdmann Design’s award-winning human-centered Design and Engineering services as a product design agency are particularly applicable to Life Sciences and Med Tech applications including devices, control systems, delivery, production systems and packaging solutions.

This is because Innovation is one of the central pillars of the Erdmann Design Approach, combining strategic planning, experience mapping and market insights.

The Innovative approach brings tightly knit and dynamic design teams to focus on innovation and real customer needs, with particular expertise in high-risk leading edge technologies and applications in medical  and pharmaceutical procedures and customer-centered design.

Design and innovation

Former Apple founder and former CEO, the late Steve Jobs said it best: ‘Geniuses ship.”  What he meant was that design innovation on its own is never enough. Technological progress can only be recognized and useful when physically manifested in tangible form as an affordable product on the shelf.

In order to innovate product design successfully, it is necessary to bring together considerations of strategy, business intelligence, and marketing imperatives with the widest possible network of specialist expertise.

A key challenge in successful product introduction is to minimize the time required for industry or medical product regulatory approval and market introduction. This is why Erdmann Design relies on strategic workshops to present the process and development steps in a target-oriented manner to speed up the product launch.

Cross Innovation

The Erdmann Design innovative approach also relies on ‘Intelligence from within’, bringing internal in-house experience, cross-disciplinary knowledge and contacts to bear on interrogating the technological Big Idea against market realities and human needs.

This approach contributes significant added value to clients seeking to establish innovative process structures that can convert innovative values in moderated form into actual services or products. Erdmann Design supports decision makers with workshops, presentations and communication tools to help them make new goals achievable.

When it comes to medical design, Erdmann can help engineering and production-oriented companies become prepared to meet the requirements of the medical product market, with its stresses on “usability engineering” and “human centered design”.

Erdmann builds Human Centered Design into the project from the start, asking two fundamental questions at the start of every development process: “Will all stakeholders be offered the right solution at the end of the project?” and “Will the goal be reached with appropriate cost efficiency?”

Experience Mapping

Erdmann Design uses Experience Mapping as a tried and tested tool that provides an insight platform for project and risk management.

Design, engineering and marketing teams work together from the outset. For life sciences products, doctors, nursing staff, care attendants and patients are integrated during the development stage because their needs, concerns and experiences provide the decisive impetus for product design development.

The experience map also forms a product design and development diary to keep the project aligned with overall business strategy and market/user needs, based on real experiences.

Together with the project management, all internal and external influencing factors are documented. Efficiency means that all relevant questions are asked right from the start.

The experience map links the requirements of the internal company objectives and business field strategies with the needs and demands of the target market.

A successful outcome also depends on providing knowledge from the market, for the market. The experience map provides valuable insights into what the market expects from new products.

Marketing

To prepare thoroughly for market introduction, Erdmann Design supports reflection and converts insight into products that are ready for the market.

Erdmann Design is involved in international product design projects and maintains contacts in China, Japan and South Korea. This recognizes that markets are global and can change, sometimes very rapidly.

Over the past two decades, the pharma industry has seen steadily increasing emphasis to outsourced manufacturing, principally in China and South East Asia. However, the COVID-19 crisis has ruthlessly exposed the drawbacks of over-extended supply chains. For companies this means repeatedly checking their own positioning among the competition so they can rapidly reposition themselves in sufficient time if necessary.

Knowledge transfer is also crucial in successful marketing.

Erdmann supports its clients with strategic and operational communication and design interventions. It is also able to establish contacts and “sponsorships” with highly qualified groups of experts and market specialists. This simultaneously allows products and services to meet detailed regulatory requirements while also providing the necessary “push” for market entry.

Networking

Erdmann Design is active in networking and helps clients to build useful networks. It lists a wide range of cooperative knowledge-sharing partners, including:

• Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
• University Hospital of Zurich
• University Hospital of Basel
• Bern University of Applied Sciences
• Zurich University of Applied Sciences
• Lucerne University of Applied Sciences
• Swiss Medical Technology Association
• Muttenz Academy for Medical Training and Simulation
• Stanford University

However, Erdmann’s networking and training commitment is not limited to the academic sphere. It gladly passes on knowledge to companies as well.

Resources

Click on Experience Mapping for Human Centered Design to download PDF.