Industrial design

With Industrial Design being Cobalt’s founding discipline, we have a wealth of experience in creating refined and desirable product solutions that achieve commercial success. It’s our job to think laterally and challenge what is possible within the technical constraints for the best product outcome to be realised. We tackle complex briefs and offer our clients a breadth of diverse ideas that solve the design challenge in different ways. These early ideas are rapid and can often push the boundaries but provide the perfect base for stimulating discussion and uncovering new insights before converging on the strongest directions to develop and refine. We work collaboratively with our clients to find a concept direction that meets or exceeds expectations and that we believe in.

The Industrial Design team analyse competitor products, explore current and emerging trends, and learn about the preferences of relevant user demographics to inform the product’s visual language. More broadly, we develop the design intent which is a comprehensive solution for how the product should look, feel and function. This gives the product it’s style, it’s personality. Upholding the design intent through the detailed design and manufacture stages sparks a collaborative effort where engineers and designers work together to achieve the optimal outcome, balancing the products aesthetic qualities with its functional purpose.

Adding to an established product range? We know that creating a cohesive brand and product family is important, so you can rely on us to maintain consistency and carry design elements across to new products that we develop.

Cobalt’s designers are skilled in the latest software and tools that enable us to produce high quality visuals, graphics, 3D models and prototypes. We can provide everything from infographics or digital sketches that communicate your product’s story to potential investors, to photorealistic renderings of product solutions to launch your design with impact. We can illustrate complex assemblies of parts, reveal the inner workings with an exploded view, or render a range of material and finish options. The right image or prototype really can bring your concept to life, capture the attention of commercial partners and customers, and be used to gauge reactions from stakeholders that influence decisions in the product’s development.

We optimise the usability of a solution through ergonomics, mock-ups and form studies, but also by developing empathy to connect with end users and their experience. We use anthropometric data to ensure our designs are comfortable and appropriate for the demographic we’re designing for. We take our designs off the screen and into the physical world as soon as possible, whether that’s a rough mock-up, functional prototype or foam model. Putting our designs into the hands of real people allows us to capture invaluable feedback and drives improvement for future iterations.