Join Product Foundry to learn how to make your physical product ideas a reality and help your business grow.
Product Foundry is an intensive innovation programme to help you develop your product ideas through hands-on design, making and testing.
From 3D printing to user testing, you’ll be introduced to core skills in our weekly sessions, and then have supported time in our advanced prototyping workshop to further develop your skills, and your product ideas to help enhance your commercial impact.
You’ll be working with a group of 8-10 peers all developing early-stage prototypes; testing ideas, functionality and user experience. You’ll learn how to generate design solutions, test your ideas, and create product specifications.
Product Foundry is an ideal programme for you, if you’d like to:
- Develop a physical product to help you commercialise and scale
- Take part in a structured programme with a cohort of peers helping to keep you accountable
- Rapidly test and improve your product
- Learn essential skills in product design and making prototypes
- Access expertise to help define your product proposition and requirements
- Receive specialist support relevant to your product idea, design skill level and development challenges
- Access expertise in areas such as IP, manufacturing and sustainable design
- Receive expert support to use a state-of-the-art prototyping workshop
If you are an established company looking to innovate and develop a product to help your business grow, then this programme could be for you.
Product Foundry consists of:
- 6 weekly sessions of 4 hours running one morning a week, delivered by product design experts from Plus X and the University of Brighton, covering core prototyping and design activities for new product development including innovations in manufacturing, distribution or sustainability
- Fully funded access to the Plus X Brighton workshop to work on your product - no membership to Plus X or fee required!
- Guided support in product development from our expert team
What we’ll cover:
- How to generate ideas with rapid lo-fi models
- How to test functionality and user experience
- How to take manufacturing constraints into account when developing your product
- How to make prototypes to share with investors to gain buy-in for your ideas
Current Schedule (subject to change):
- Week 1 - Thursday 13 October, 10am-2pm : Onboarding, briefs and introduction to prototyping
- Week 2 - Thursday 20 October, 10am-2pm: Digital fabrication and 101 (laser cutting)
- Week 3 - Thursday 27 October, 10am-2pm: Operational Models / User Testing (varied, depending on products)
- Week 4 - Thursday 3 November, 10am-2pm: Detail prototypes (including 3D printing)
- Week 5 - Thursday 10 November, 10am-2pm :Manufacturing (DFMA and tear-downs)
- Week 6 - Thursday 17 November, 10am-2pm: Presentation (renders, hi-fi modelling, photography)
- Week 6 - Thursday 24 November, 2-5pm: Off-boarding and presentations
Key take-aways:
- You’ll learn practical, creative and technical skills to develop your product and ensure that it adds value
- You’ll learn how to use digital fabrication tools like 3D printers and laser cutters to develop early-stage product prototypes
- Gained insights from leading design expertise in design thinking and practice
- Have benefitted from hands-on time to iterate through prototypes
- Accessed supported time in the workshop outside of core sessions to develop your product and access prototyping expertise
- Worked in a unique state-of-the-art prototyping workshop with advanced machines and a supportive team
Product Foundry has been created by Plus X Innovation Hubs in collaboration with the University of Brighton as part of the Brighton Research Information Technology Exchange (BRITE) project. The Product Foundry is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund and fully funded for eligible SMEs.
Apply using the form below or book a tour with the BRITE team to find out more.
members only
open to all
in person
Virtual
APPLY FOR A PLACE: Product Foundry 7 week innovation programme
Thursday, October 13, 2022
10:00 am
Join Product Foundry to learn how to make your physical product ideas a reality and help your business grow.
register on eventbrite
The Plus X workshop is a great place to work, not just for the facilities: the team and other workshop users means that it is an inspiring and creative place, a great environment to develop prototypes, and get deep into production.
Gareth James, Founder Tidey.co
Plus X Brighton - Expert
Andrew Sleigh, Plus X innovation hubs, Workshop Manager
Andrew runs the prototyping space and workshop programmes at Plus X. With a background in digital design, the grassroots maker movement, and design education, he works to support Plus X’s community of makers and innovators to learn new skills, and realise their product ideas.
University of Brighton - Expert
James Tooze, University of Brighton, Course Leader of Product Design with Professional Experience BSc
James Tooze is a designer, maker and researcher whose work focuses on the interconnected areas of digital manufacturing, open data, urban production and future cities. His work is centred on the realisation that to transition to an economy that is regenerative by design, almost everything needs to be re-evaluated, reimagined and redesigned.
