For inventors and first-time founders
Your electronics are the brain. We design the body: a shape people want to pick up, a housing that fits every board, button and battery, and parts a factory can mold without costly changes. Industrial designers and engineers work as one team under NDA, check every part with the toolmaker before steel is cut, and hand you every file.
The short answer
Electronic product design is the work that turns working electronics into a finished product. It covers industrial design for the look and feel, mechanical design for the housing and moving parts, fitting the board, battery and antenna inside, and design for manufacturing so a factory can mold and assemble it. It is the stage where your invention gets its body.
Where first products slip
Most first products don't fail on looks. They fail between the render and the mold, where a shape that looked perfect on screen can't come out of the tool.
Problem 01
Looks get designed first and engineering fixes them later, so the product loses the look you paid for. As one builder put it, "this should've stayed a render."
Problem 02
In 2020, CoffeeJack found one tool could not release a part because of an undercut. The fix meant moving the inner assembly and a longer wait for backers.
Problem 03
A study of 144 funded Kickstarter hardware campaigns found no more than 32% delivered on time. Changing a design after the mold is cut is one of the costliest ways to slip.
What we design
Four jobs, one team, so the product you approve on screen is the product the factory makes.
Sketches, form, ergonomics and CMF (colour, material and finish), so the product feels worth its price the moment someone picks it up.
Enclosure parts, snap fits, screws, hinges, buttons and seals, designed in production-ready CAD.
Board outline, antenna windows, heat paths, light pipes, connectors and a battery door that is safe and easy to reach.
Design for manufacturing, toleranced drawings and a tooling package checked with the toolmaker.
Start where you are
We begin with research and sketches, and plan the electronics alongside the design.
New to hardware? Read our guide for non-technical foundersWe check them against the factory, keep the look and make it buildable.
Get a free design reviewWe design the body around your proof of concept and plan the move to a custom board.
See prototyping servicesWe design a housing around your board, or flag the board changes that would make it better.
See our page for technical foundersBuilding something that thinks or connects? See Physical AI product development and IoT product design.
How it runs
Industrial design typically takes 2 to 3 weeks for a simple accessory and 7 to 10 weeks for a powered device with a board and a mechanism. Here is what happens in each stage.
Stage 01 · 3 to 5 days
We agree who it is for, what it must fit and what similar products get wrong.
You get
A design brief and a must-fit parts list.
Time
3 to 5 days
Stage 02 · 1 to 2 weeks
We explore 6 to 20 directions and narrow them to the one you want.
You get
Sketch sheets and a chosen direction.
Time
1 to 2 weeks
Stage 03 · 2 to 3 weeks
The chosen direction becomes a 3D model with colours, materials and finishes.
You get
Photoreal renders and a CMF sheet.
Time
2 to 3 weeks
Stage 04 · Overlaps with form work
Parts, fastenings, seals and the board, battery and antenna are engineered in.
You get
Production CAD and an appearance model.
Time
Overlaps with form work
Stage 05 · Tool samples 4 to 8 weeks after sign-off
The toolmaker reviews every part before steel is cut.
You get
A DFM report and a tooling package.
Time
Tool samples 4 to 8 weeks after sign-off
Design for manufacturing
We design to these from the first sketch, because each one is cheaper to get right on screen than in steel.
Walls need 1 to 2 degrees of slope so parts slide out of the mold, and more on textured surfaces. No draft means drag marks and a costlier tool.
Walls about 1 to 3.5 mm thick, kept consistent. Thick spots shrink unevenly and leave sink marks you can see.
Stiffen with ribs about half the wall thickness instead of thicker walls. The part is stronger, lighter and cheaper to mold.
Any hook the mold can't pull straight off needs a side action, which adds tool cost and lead time. CoffeeJack's delay started with one.
Built to pass
The housing decides more of your compliance than most inventors expect. We plan for these from the first sketch.
We are engineers, not lawyers. For patents, work with a registered patent attorney; we prepare the drawings with them.
Design that worked, and design that didn't
The products people love made one or two design choices brilliantly. The ones that struggled often had a problem in the body, not the brain.
Twist the base to set the temperature, instead of the buttons everyone expected. Shrinking it to fit a cup holder took about two years.
Designed after a month of research with families. Turn it face down and it switches to bedtime mode.
A soft, child-proof fabric cube. Placing a figure on top is the whole interface, and it won a Red Dot award.
The founders paired with an outside industrial designer, and the result won a Red Dot award.
An AI bird feeder that started on Kickstarter and later won a Good Design Award.
Oura says a change as small as 0.1 mm can affect comfort and fit.
Lessons the hard way
Recalled for overheating, about 10,500 units. The maker was no longer in business to fix it.
About 2.2 million bikes recalled because the seat post could break.
Eight machined aluminium parts to squeeze juice packs that buyers could squeeze by hand.
Trends we design for
Our own work
Products from other companies are shown as market examples, not as Inventornest work.
What you get
What it costs
Published industry estimates, checked November 2026. After your free design review, we quote a fixed price for each stage.
Get my free design reviewA cheap file shows a shape. It rarely checks draft, wall thickness, the board inside or the toolmaker's rules, and the fixes arrive after the mold is quoted. We design the look and the build together, so the first tool is the right one.
FAQ
It is the work that turns working electronics into a finished product: industrial design for the look and feel, mechanical design for the housing and parts, fitting the board, battery and antenna inside, and design for manufacturing so a factory can mold and assemble it.
Industrial design decides how the product looks, feels and is used: its shape, ergonomics, colours and finishes. Mechanical engineering decides how it is built: the parts, fastenings, seals and tolerances. Problems start when they are done by separate teams, so we do both together.
Published industry estimates put industrial design at about $15,000 to $30,000 for a typical product, and enclosure engineering at $25,000 to $60,000 for 10 to 30 parts. Tooling is extra. We start with a free design review and then quote a fixed price for each stage.
Industrial design typically takes 2 to 3 weeks for a simple accessory and 7 to 10 weeks for a powered device with a board and a mechanism. Engineering overlaps with that work, and steel tool samples usually arrive 4 to 8 weeks after the design is signed off.
No. We can design the body while the electronics are being planned, as long as we agree the board size, battery and antenna early. If you already have a board, we design around it, or flag small board changes that would make the product better.
You get sketches, renders, a CMF specification, native CAD and STEP files, 2D drawings with tolerances, a parts list and a DFM report. You own all of them, so you can take them to any factory you choose.
DFM means design for manufacturing: shaping every part so a factory can make it reliably and cheaply. It covers draft angles, wall thickness, ribs and undercuts. Getting it right before tooling avoids the expensive mold changes that delay many first products.
Published estimates put an aluminium mold at about $3,000 to $15,000, good for roughly 10,000 to 100,000 parts, and a steel mold at $20,000 to $100,000 or more for millions of parts. Changes are far cheaper on screen than once steel is cut.
Yes, to the level it needs. IP54 means it shrugs off splashes and dust, and IP67 means it survives being dropped in water to 1 metre. We choose seals, gaskets and joins at the design stage, and plan how the battery will be charged or replaced.
Yes. We sign an NDA before you share any details, and the design files we create for you are yours. For legal protection of the look itself, a US design patent covers a product's appearance for 15 years from grant.