3 Tips for an outstanding product development

By Move Cool | LaunchX Team 24

July 29, 2022

MoveCool: The Process of Product Design and Company Identity

Product development and branding are essential to a company’s image. Without a good product and solid company identity, companies will find it quite difficult to garner traction. At MoveCool – we’ve spent our 5 weeks at LaunchX building 2+ prototypes, developing an MVP, and designing a memorable logo for our product – giving us key insight into the grueling process of branding, product design, and the establishment of our company identity.

Before going into the meat of this topic – MoveCool was founded by Armaan Chandak, Julianne Wang, Derek Liu, and Shaomin Kee – and we are set on curing the issue of sweaty backs from wearing backpacks in hot weather. Our solution is currently set on developing a cooling backpack that blows air up one’s back while being worn – and throughout our 5 weeks at LaunchX we’ve developed numerous prototypes, an MVP, a landing page (movecool.shop), a logo, multiple social media accounts (@movecoolofficial on Instagram and TikTok) and are on our way to manufacturing our product.

Biggest Learnings from Product Development

#1 . The Power of Perspectives:

MoveCool realized was the power of listening to multiple perspectives. In terms of product development, our team initially struggled immensely with deciding on a central idea/opportunity. While other teams were already designing logos and beginning their prototypes, we still were bouncing between three ideas. Every single member of the team brought their own unique opportunity, formed by a culmination of their struggles and skills. In the first week our team’s multiple perspectives almost seemed like a burden as it frustratingly hindered progress. However, as our team got closer and more accustomed to working together, our diverse takes were able to produce a fantastic product and brand. 

#2. Trial and Error:

We gathered from our experience the importance of trial and error. For every decision, our team would always iterate through different versions of ideas. For our brand, we went from Chillout to ChillPack to finally MoveCool. For our product we pivoted from ice packs to plastic fans to finally blade-less fans. However, through constant pitching, revision, and simply testing things out, we were able to sift through numerous ideas to ultimately finish with the best product and brand we could.

#3. Think outside the product:

Our third takeaway was about making the impossible seem possible. With none of our team members having experience in sewing or electrical engineering – creating and designing multiple prototypes and an MVP for our cooling backpack was quite difficult. We had no idea how to create a prototype – nonetheless an entire MVP that integrated a fan within it! But through sheer determination and watching numerous YouTube tutorials – MoveCool was able to finally finish a product and officially establish our company as something tangible.

Conclusion

We had a hard time making our company and branding different from our competitors, until we talked to several mentors and realized that our brand and our plans for eco friendliness could be our differentiating factor rather than just our product. For new entrepreneurs, it’s extremely important that your product isn’t the only thing you have different from competitors – but rather, your brand as a whole.

Open communication is one of the most important skills that a team should have because it ensures that everything runs smoothly. Make sure to have organized team meetings and clearly communicate the ideas. We overall found it the most beneficial where everyone was contributing to every part of the project in their own unique way and communicating about our ideas rather than everyone doing their own separate part, without any teamwork or collaboration.

Overall – the process of product development and branding as a startup requires tons of trial and error. Make sure to never give up, even if it takes you countless hours to finish that logo design or prototype – or to finish up that spreadsheet. Perseverance is key to ensuring success – we know from experience!