As products become more layered, merging hardware, software, and intelligence, the path from idea to market becomes increasingly crowded with risk. Unclear requirements and scattered ownership don’t just cause delays; they ripple through your entire development process, impacting budgets and performance.

At Verhaert Nederland, we specialize in bridging the gap between high-level strategy and technical engineering. We’ve found that the secret to accelerating innovation isn’t just ‘working faster’, it’s about Requirements Ownership.

By bringing clarity and alignment to the R&D process, we help Product Owners and Innovation Leaders:
– Reduce costly development risks.
– Align multidisciplinary teams from day one.
– Make faster, more confident decisions.

Access the recording and session summary below to learn how you can bring this approach into your own innovation projects.
 

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As products become more layered – blending hardware, software, connectivity and intelligence – unclear requirements can create costly risks. Misaligned priorities, scattered ownership and overlooked details ripple through development, affecting performance, budget and time-to-market.

This expert session is designed for product owners, innovation managers, R&D leaders and founders looking to bring clarity, alignment and control to their development process. Over the years, we’ve helped organizations accelerate innovation by structuring requirements ownership and bridging the gap between strategy, design and engineering.

During the ‘Driving innovation success with requirements ownership and engineering excellence’ webinar on December 9th, BEACON and Verhaert shared how on-site project managers and engineering specialists work together to translate complex customer needs into scalable, market-ready products. Their insights show how strong requirements ownership keeps teams aligned, reduces risk and supports faster, more confident decision-making.

Access the recording and session summary below to learn how you can bring this approach into your own innovation projects.
 

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As products grow more complex, the pressure on mechanical engineers to get designs right the first time has never been higher. Every decision you make can cascade throughout the entire system, just like other teams’ choices can change your design, impacting overall performance, manufacturability and cost.

This expert session is tailored for product designers and mechanical engineers, showing you how to think from a system-level perspective in your own designs and make smarter design decisions. Over the years, we’ve supported engineering teams in accelerating innovation by applying new ways of thinking and tackling problems head-on.

This session brings those insights from Karl Wyseur, On-site Mechanical Engineer at Verhaert Consulting, and Samuel Van den Driessche, Mechanical System Engineer at Verhaert Product Innovation, directly to you. Access the presentation and summary below to learn how!

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Connected products open the door to powerful new digital features, services and business models, yet many companies shy away from making their products connected. Adding this extra layer of technical complexity also requires new skills, raises security concerns and brings up privacy issues. At the core of these digital transformation challenges lies one key enabler: the right infrastructure. Connected products require a real-time, reliable and maintainable architecture that bridges digital ecosystems and physical devices, without losing control over scalability, security or flexibility.

During the ‘Building the digital backbone of smart, connected devices’ webinar on May 20th, Dennis Daems, Chief Technology Officer, and Joachim Jansen, Senior Software Engineer & Project Manager, shared their real-world experience with connected digital innovation. Access the recording and summary below to learn how to approach this complexity with confidence and turn it into a competitive edge.

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Myth 1: UX = UI

When you ask people to define UX (user experience) design, you often get answers like “Designing clean, modern interfaces” or “Making things look good.” But that’s actually UI (user interface) design. Though they are closely related, UX is about much more than just aesthetics, it’s about designing the entire user journey, both digital and physical.

• UI = How it looks
  User interface design refers to the visual and interactive elements of a product, such as buttons, icons, typography, colors, tactile controls, ergonomics and overall layouts. It’s all about how the product looks (aesthetics) and how users interact with it intuitively.
• UX = How it works
  User experience design is about the overall feel of the product and how easily users can accomplish their goals. It involves research, usability testing, wireframing and interaction design to ensure a smooth, efficient and enjoyable experience.

A great example of this came up while we were developing Ordo Key. Initially, the focus was on look and feel, but user feedback quickly revealed that installers found the installation process unintuitive. This insight led to a shift in approach, prioritizing usability improvements to streamline the workflow, proving that UX is not just about aesthetics but about making products truly work for their users.

© Ordo Key

Myth 2: UX is a luxury expense

Thinking of UX as a “nice-to-have” rather than a critical investment can be a costly mistake. Poor UX doesn’t just frustrate users, it can lead to market failure, expensive updates and even brand damage. Some examples? In 2012, Apple Maps launched with inaccurate data, poor navigation and distorted 3D maps. This resulted in Apple’s shares losing 4.5% of their value, price tag: $30 billion. Volkswagen‘s touchscreen-only controls in the 2020s was widely criticized for being frustrating and unintuitive. In the end, the company announced it would bring back physical buttons. In 2018, Snapchat changed the app’s layout in an attempt to make it more user-friendly, but instead, it caused confusion and frustration. The company lost millions of users and stock prices dropped drastically.

If done right, investing in UX becomes a strategic move that generates significant returns. In fact, research from Forrester showed that for every $1 invested in UX, companies can see up to $100 in return. Or to give an example of the value of a product with a great UX, various analysts estimate that the value of Apple’s Airpod business is $195 billion. That is in line with the value of the combined Bel 20, excluding AB InBev (or about twice the value of AB InBev).

Another mistake is thinking UX requires a massive, time-consuming investment, while it actually can be delivered in small, focused sprints, building on a design roadmap defined in initial project brainstorms.

Myth 3: UX is subjective

Let’s set the record straight: UX is not about the designer’s personal preference or ‘what looks good’. It’s about what works for users, based on data and research. UX uses clear, actionable insights gathered from surveys, feedback and real-world usage data. You dive deep into how features are actually being used, identify pain points and understand frequent tasks.

To measure UX success, we rely on hard metrics like task success rate, task duration, NPS (Net Promoter Score), error rates and misclick rates, defined based on the company’s objectives. For Reynaers Aluminium, research was key in finding the right features for their online platform, DigiTrace. As a result, it’s now widely used, has received a lot of positive feedback and has become a key driver for data-driven innovation.

© Verhaert Digital

Based on a mix of human psychology, usability research, industry best practices and accessibility principles, UX also follows established standards. For example, by following common UI patterns and visual cues (affordances), users don’t have to “learn” a new interface, they can rely on what they already know without needing instructions.

Myth 4: More features = Better UX

Actually more correct would be: More features, more problems. Overloading an app with unnecessary features can overwhelm users, while they crave simplicity and intuitive workflows. In many cases, companies focus more on driving business goals and adding features quickly rather than understanding users’ true needs. The key to great UX is prioritizing the right features, and this starts with research before any development begins.

Alberto Savoia put it perfectly when he said: “You have to build the right it before you build it right”. A great example comes from our work with TEO. Their interfaces had evolved based on customer requests, leading to a variety of workflows and a complex architecture. Based on in-depth research, we helped them refine their design, streamlining features and creating a more structured, intuitive app. Another great example is from Loop. These earplugs are super popular for a reason: They’re a simple product that offers a great experience.

© Loop Earplugs

Myth 5: Users will figure it out

According to PwC, 32% of users will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience. That’s not very surprising. People expect products to be intuitive and effortless to use, and they don’t want to struggle or waste time trying to understand how something works. So the idea that users will simply ‘figure it out’ how to use it is a recipe for failure.

Take this door, for example. Would you push or pull? Everyone can recall the frustration (or embarrassment) of pulling a door that you should actually push open. In UX, we call this concept the ‘Norman door’, a design that confuses its users, causes errors or functions counterintuitively. It also highlights that UX goes far beyond digital interfaces and apps, it applies to the workflows of any product, service or system. These kinds of frustrations may seem small at first, but when they happen too often, it’s all the user will remember about the product.

Many companies assume they know enough about their users, but there’s a huge gap between being familiar with a product and being a first-time user. This can lead to poor decision-making because what seems obvious to the creator might be confusing or unintuitive for someone who hasn’t spent hours with the product. Thanks to the previously mentioned user research, UI standards and affordances, even a first-time user can use your product intuitively. Creativity is cool, but usability wins every time.

A strategic approach to innovation

The misconceptions around UX can seriously stifle innovation. When companies make decisions based on incorrect assumptions, they end up with products that frustrate users and fail to provide real value. UX is not an afterthought or a luxury; it’s a strategic tool that directly impacts user satisfaction, engagement, and business success. To truly innovate, companies should regularly challenge their assumptions and ensure they understand the real needs of their users. After all, developing a product that doesn’t offer value to the end user will inevitably fail.

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For years, the MVP mantra ruled digital innovation to kick off the product journey. With connected devices, the rhythm of incremental updates kept products evolving: smarter, faster, and better with each release. As digital innovation has matured, so have user expectations, raising the stakes like never before. Today’s MVPs must not just meet regulations, but exceed usability, connectivity, and cyber security expectations. In this track, we’ll take a deep dive into real-world cases to explore how MVPs have evolved and why building secure, feature-rich products from the start is now a must. Check out the presentations from the Innovation Day of 2024 on:

• A minimal viable product to explore emerging markets
  By Dennis Daems, Technology Manager at Verhaert Digital Innovation
• Mapping the EU Cyber Resilience Act on digital products
  By Bart De Vos, Consultant Embedded Lab at Verhaert Product Innovation

View the presentation

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Everyone agrees that sustainable innovation is the cornerstone to addressing environmental challenges and lasting economic growth. The truth is that making meaningful changes is difficult and sometimes feels like speeding ahead and hitting the brakes at the same time. What’s holding us back? In this track, you’ll dive into the tricky obstacles slowing down progress and shine a light on fresh, forward-thinking approaches that can break the cycle. Check out the presentations from the Innovation Day of 2024 on:

• Design for sustainability, from an incremental toward a more radical strategy
  By Jeroen Wilms, Consultant MechLab at Verhaert Product Innovation
• The search for sustainability impact
  By David Pas, Customer Success Manager at Verhaert Strategic Innovation and Laurien Wolfswinkel, Head of Operations at Beacon Masters in Innovation

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Where product innovation meets manufacturing

Applying design-for-manufacturing (DFM) principles in your product development process will significantly enhance the efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and overall quality of your products. Here’s the million-dollar question: how do you design a product for manufacturing? How do you design a product that ensures a seamless transition from final prototype to mass production?

For maximum efficiency in manufacturing and minimal production costs, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of how design choices influence these aspects. The product’s shape, for example, has a significant impact on the cost of the injection molding and thus on the total manufacturing cost. DFM includes: simplifying product designs, minimizing the number of parts, standardizing components, and selecting materials that are easy to work with.

Securing success: collaborative design synergy with manufacturers

DFM aims to bring all relevant key players together as early as possible in the design phase. The further along you are in the manufacturing process, the more expensive it becomes to make changes to your design. So early collaboration with designers, engineers, manufacturing partners and others is crucial to integrating manufacturability considerations into the product design. It will enable you to mitigate risks like supply chain disruptions, inflation, and material and labor shortages, while it also facilitates the creation of easily manufacturable designs. Whether your manufacturer operates locally or internationally, regular cross-functional meetings play a pivotal role in identifying potential challenges and aligning design decisions with manufacturing capabilities.

The impact of manufacturing on design and the transformative potential of innovation © Verhaert

Geographical manufacturing: rethinking the location game

Over the past few decades, many appliance manufacturers moved production to Asian hotspots, especially China. Why? The promise of lower labor costs, fewer environmental rules, and a massive market playground. Of course, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. They’ve hit a few bumps, like rising shipping costs, dips in product quality, intellectual property headaches, tricky trade relationships, and increasing geopolitical tensions.

Given these hurdles, some manufacturers are rethinking their location game. By bringing production back to Europe, they’re looking to tap into top-notch standards, be closer to customers, and enjoy more political and legal stability. Plus, let’s not forget, that choosing the right manufacturing spot before and during the design for manufacturability process is a game-changer. It’s not just about cutting costs, it’s about nailing that perfect product-market fit. Including geographical factors in your DFM strategy can be the secret sauce to your product’s financial and market success.

Curious about the great manufacturing relocation shuffle? Stay tuned for our upcoming perspective in which we’ll explore the tug-of-war between Europe and China!

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Ecodesign balances sustainability and profitability

Sustainability takes a central position within R&D and innovation, think about meeting stricter regulations and standards in terms of environmental protection, delivering long-term impact, efficient use of available materials and energy, and meeting the growing consumer interest in sustainable products and services.

Nevertheless, many companies struggle to find solutions that are both sustainable and profitable or to integrate sustainability into their core business. For that reason, Verhaert brought together experts from C-Battery, Circular Valley, DEME, UAntwerp, VITO and in-house teams to share success strategies and best practices to overcome the sustainability paradox in different domains.

Joris De Lamper, Manager of Innovation Acceleration and host of the seminar adds: “Ecodesign is not only a moral duty to future generations, it’s also a source of innovation and competitive advantage. How can we make the right trade-offs and design solutions that take into account environmental, economic, and technological factors? That’s the question we wanted to answer during this event. By giving each other the most specific strategic management advice possible, we can work faster toward various sustainability goals.”

Full circular life cycles: optimally closing the cycles

Sustainable design is about innovation on several fronts. As an organization, you can’t get stuck in a certain ‘sustainability tunnel’ as this makes it much more difficult to respond to external changes. Many companies lack a common framework to sharpen their perspective and definitions around sustainability.

Karine Van Doorsselaer, professor of materials science and ecodesign at UAntwerp, refers to the ‘butterfly diagram’ of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This visualization showcases the circular economy and provides a clear blueprint for companies to work toward. It also maps the entire product life cycle to assess the total environmental impact. To efficiently close the cycles, it’s recommended that the consumer has as little responsibility as possible. This way you avoid contaminated waste streams due to improper sorting behavior. An alternative to making the circular system successful is to introduce an end-of-live incentive toward the end user, as with deposit systems.

Competitive business models

To be competitive against current linear economic business models, you need strong partnerships throughout the value chain. Only when each stakeholder enjoys added value within the model will the likelihood of adoption increase.

Product-as-a-service business models are very interesting in the context of sustainable design. Indeed, the producing party benefits from designing them according to other design drivers, for example, design for disassembly and design for repair. Even though this switch can be investment-intensive, companies can draw strength from strong partnerships and adopt hybrid models as an intermediate step.

“The Sustainability Paradox was the ideal combination of inspiring success stories, practical insights, and interactive discussions with both speakers and participants,” concludes Damien Feuillan, seminar participant. By connecting the Belgian ecosystem across borders with new partners such as Circular Valley, Verhaert created a platform to share key success factors and potential solutions. Together for sustainable innovation!

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Let’s dive into the diverse avenues of progress in the coffee industry!

1. Intelligent home roasting

Redefining coffee quality and sustainability

Bunafr‘s participation in CES 2024 introduces an intelligent home coffee roaster that transforms the roasting experience. Beyond being a machine, it offers a fully automated, smoke-free process with advanced technologies. The innovation focuses on personalized roasting, sustainability, and direct connections with coffee farmers, promising an unparalleled coffee experience.

Coffee machines: ©Bunafr (left) – ©Midea (right)

2. AI-guided personalization

The future of smart coffee systems

Midea presents the ‘Barista Brew’ coffee brewer/grinder system, a smart coffee solution that leverages AI-guided personalization. With one-touch favorites, BrewIQ AI suggestions and easy tracking, this innovation aims to make coffee brewing accessible to all, regardless of expertise. It sets a new standard for smart coffee systems, emphasizing simplicity and technological advancement.

3. Premium espresso with technological precision

Bosch’s fully automatic machines

Bosch introduces a new line of fully automatic espresso machines, emphasizing premium-quality coffee and technological precision. The Aroma Max System, Active Select Display, and integration with Home Connect® redefine the home coffee experience. This innovation aims to deliver consistent coffee quality, personalization and over 35 beverage options through advanced technology.

Coffee machines: ©FrazyBot (left) – ©Bosch (right)

4. Robotic beverage crafting

The FrazyBot revolution

FrazyBot, a modular beverage brewing robot, redefines at-home drink preparation. Designed to minimize manual interventions and clean-up, the FrazyBot promises precision and professionalism, comparable to café or bar drinks. The Ingredient-Sensing Robotic Technology (InSeRT) ensures an effortless, customizable and high-quality beverage experience at the press of a button.

5. Eco-friendly espresso

Lavazza’s Tiny Eco revolution

Lavazza‘s Tiny Eco emerges as a compact and sustainable espresso machine made from recycled plastic and compostable capsules. With a focus on sustainability and design, this innovation offers an authentic Italian espresso experience. Its easy maintenance, dishwasher-safe components and compatibility with Lavazza capsules contribute to an eco-friendly and responsible coffee-making approach.

Coffee machine ©Lavazza

Comparing the strategies behind the devices

How do these devices and innovation strategies compare to one another? We made the following assessment based on people’s opinions on a coffee lover’s user perception. We used criteria such as emotional evocation, premium feel, personalization, and the social responsibility of the device from a user’s perception.

Notes:

• Emotion addresses: Reflects how the innovation addresses the emotional aspect of the coffee lover.
• Premium feel: Represents the perceived luxury or premium feel associated with the innovation.
• More personalized feeling: Indicates the degree to which the innovation provides a personalized and tailored experience.
• Social responsibility: Reflects the level of commitment to social and environmental responsibility in the innovation.

People however don’t switch their current coffee maker easily, you need a new compelling reason. When looking for innovative features you need to investigate the importance and the satisfaction level of each of the features. That’s why we also added an assessment relative to the willingness to pay.

Notes:

• Satisfaction rating (1-5): Reflects the current satisfaction level with the existing coffee machine.
• Eagerness to Upgrade (1-5): Indicates how interested the potential buyer is in upgrading the coffee machine based on the discussed factors.
• Willingness to Pay Rating (Low-Med-High): Represents the potential buyer’s willingness to pay for an upgraded coffee machine, considering the perceived value of the innovations.

In conclusion

In conclusion, these innovations highlight diverse avenues of innovative progress for the coffee industry, ranging from intelligent roasting and AI-guided personalization to hands-free brewing and eco-friendly espresso solutions. Each emphasizes the unique innovation direction chosen by these respective brands, providing consumers with a glimpse into the transformative landscape of home coffee experiences. However, only 3 concepts stand out in giving enough reasons to switch from their older device to a new coffee maker. This brings me to my final thought: Would a device combining the 3 outstanding strategies (premiumized coffee, robotics and sustainability) be the holy grail of innovation? Or would it more likely fit in the contradiction of less is more?

The post As seen at CES: brewing the future of innovation in coffee experiences appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

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