David Copeland
There is a significant need within MedTech to rapidly envision product concepts, establishing an aspirational product vision while identifying key user, technical, and regulatory considerations prior to larger development investment. These early design sprints deliver significant value through rapid problem framing and strategic alignment, early identification of usability and adoption barriers, and accelerated convergence towards a viable product architecture, ultimately saving time, cost, and resources. Assembling a small, agile early-phase execution team with deep domain expertise is essential to drive this front-end innovation. Veranex specializes in these early phases and leverages our expertise and proven methodologies to deliver robust and informed concept solutions rapidly.
Editor’s note: Evan Williams contributed to this article.
Briefly: Key Takeaways
- Primary Value: Small investment yields high impact product visions and embodiments while identifying key user, technical, and regulatory considerations.
- Timeline: Fast 6-8 week timelines for early, defensible concept solutions with pathways towards product development.
- Agile Expert Team: Front-end innovation specialists offer domain expertise and fresh perspective through creative problem solving for some of MedTech’s most difficult product challenges.
- Critical Deliverables: Aspirational vision illustrations and storyboards, 3D renderings and animations, VR simulations, and user experience interaction models.
- Purpose-Built Output: Veranex will work with you to determine the appropriate level of concept fidelity based on your needs and to maximize your investment.
What Is a Medical Device Concept Vision Sprint?
Concept Vision Sprints are early phase design activities, allowing emerging medical technologies to be embodied into product concepts, addressing user needs and solving real user problems. The output can be leveraged to generate buy-in to greenlight development projects, provide a system vision during investor pitches, and serve as stimuli for resonance testing and end-user feedback before investing in development activities.
What It’s Not
Concept Vision Sprints serve as the tip of the spear in product design and development. It is the first step in creating alignment on a product vision but is not proof of concept. Once a concept solution has been identified through a user-centered approach, accounting for business needs, usability, and technical parameters, feels-like and works-like interaction models can be generated to test and evaluate intended use and workflow. Further downstream, proof of concept includes iterative user and functional bench testing evaluations conducted in order to compile objective evidence to prove feasibility.
The primary goal with a Concept Vision Sprint is to generate informed, defensible, and on-target concept visions leveraging your technology. It sets a design direction for a compelling and complete product solution, setting up future phase development activities. Within weeks, you could expect one or more of the following based on your project needs and investment:
Tangible Assets That Make Your Device Vision Real
- 2D illustrated concept visions with storyboards depicting how the concept solves for use scenario and workflow challenges.
- Industrial Design CAD models that are informed by usability and technical considerations.
- Photorealistic renderings and animations that illustrate how your device could looks and could be presented.
- VR simulations that allow users and stakeholders to interact with virtual concept models within realistic environments.
- Physical user experience models to simulate use for hands-on evaluations.
- Identification of key product risk areas and considerations for development based on the proposed design direction and product pathway.
What Early Phase Concept Visioning Output Enables
Concept Vision Sprints meet needs as an alignment tool internally to open up development budget streams, or for user testing to generate feedback on the viability of the idea. Common concept sprint outputs include:
- Internal Stakeholder Evaluation: Present end deliverables to key internal stakeholders to gain buy-in and alignment for new concepts.
- Investor Pitch: Create investor pitch decks and assets with compelling product concepts to secure funding.
- User Resonance Testing: Present high-fidelity, early concept illustrations and/or physical ergonomic models to users to test and evaluate design directions and collect directional insight.
- Fast-track Concept Development: Share output with R&D and development teams to iterate, refine, and advance concepts towards design and development.
Setting Up Downstream Success in Medical Device Development
Effective concept visioning doesn’t just validate your current idea. It sets the foundation for everything that comes next. When you eventually enter product development, feasibility testing, later-stage design controls, and inevitable FDA submission, the groundwork laid during concept visioning becomes invaluable. You’ll have already identified and addressed many user problems, preferences, and pain points to ensure your innovation meets user needs and delivers tangible value. You’ll have considered that your envisioned product is viable and makes business sense. And lastly, you’ll have started a technical framework for the proposed product embodiment, which is critical for downstream feasibility and development activities. The goal is to inform future phase product development with confidence, leveraging the product vision to jump-start the vetting process across critical aspects and functions.
The Bottom Line: Effectively establish your medical device concept vision early.
Whether you’re a startup seeking Series A funding or an established company looking to innovate around familiar products and problems, concept visioning sprints are your first and most critical checkpoint. It’s where you transform uncertainty into actionable direction through a proven, methodical, and fast human-centered creative problem-solving approach.
It’s never too early to explore how your technology could become tomorrow’s high-value medical device. Get in touch with a member of the Veranex Human-Centered Design team today.
About the author: David Copeland is Veranex Senior Principal, Human-Centered Industrial Design. Bringing over 30 years of product development experience across a broad array of categories and markets, David manages cross-functional teams to deliver compelling solutions. He leads and advises a multidisciplined team comprised of industrial designers, user interface experts, and usability specialists. David and his team are user advocates, working to collect and uncover all apparent and unmet needs a user may have while using a product. He and his team then work to integrate enhancements into a solution that resolve the identified problem, ensuring the device’s function fits the users’ needs.