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I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

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Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#311

Post by Chris2048 »

withinboredom wrote: post #266
dendrite9 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you consider the parts you made foodsafe? Or would you have to use the parts to make a mold, then produce foodsafe parts? The nooks and crannies in 3d printed plastic, plus the less controlled melting/cooling has concerned me for making something which is food safe. Mostly the concern about places for bacteria to hide on the parts.

It also depends on what you are doing. If they are single-use, they can be made food-safe pretty easily, even with the nooks and crannies. With 3d printing, it can be pretty cheap to do single-use stuff. You can also electro-plate them with silver and have a pretty sanitary part.

> You can also electro-plate them

You can electro-plate thermoplastic?

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#312

Post by OJFord »

layer8 wrote: post #310
OJFord wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should 'Show HN' this in its own right, this is great.

It has been on here a couple of times: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=invisible-computers.c...

Yeah I saw those just checking if it had been via Algolia, but they didn't do very well and I thought an actual 'Show HN' that's clearly a 'member project' as it were, with someone around to answer questions and chat about it, might fare better. (The call for feedback a couple of years ago aside.) Plenty of interest in this thread despite no relation (in terms of the product) to OP! And people seem often to be commenting about these things, or difficulty in buying big/good enough epaper displays to do it, etc.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#313

Post by sumtechguy »

konschubert wrote: post #221
fxtentacle wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this really shows that marketing is now the most crucial skill. It has become easy and affordable to design products, the process is now almost fully commodified with all those OEM and production services. The only thing that now stands between your idea and financial success is your ability to reach the target market, i.e. marketing. Also, such a slick KickStarter campaign typically costs $10k plus ad spend i…

Making a product, certifying it and making sure it’s safe is also hard. But marketing is extremely important and it’s just a very different skill than tech. I make these epaper calendar displays. https://shop.invisible-computers.com I have invested thousands of hours into making them as good as possible. You couldn’t tell from my website :D I would probably profit much more if I just stopped improving them and focuse…

> But marketing is extremely important and it’s just a very different skill than tech.

I once watched my father sell a single christmas lightbulb to another guy on a garage sale in the middle of july. "I convinced him he needed it" After that day I paid attention to sales. Some people just have that knack for it. They naturally know all the techniques and when to use them and how to properly use them. There used to be a very nice wikipedia article that broke most of them down but it looks like that page is gone (or I can not find it).

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#314

Post by Flozzin »

somedude895 wrote: post #192
godelski wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks so simple, but I guess that's a sign of good design. I find that this is tends to be the rule, not the exception and it's really reworked how I view things. I've started to almost (more jokingly than seriously) believe that the less novel something appears the more it actually is. The real mark for a good work seems to be "wow, how did you spend so much time on that? It's so fucking obvious" combined with "wh…

I used to embarassingly think that design was merely a matter of aesthetics until I read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, which opened my eyes to how much thought goes into seemingly simple things. Really changed the way I look at human-designed objects. My favorite anecdote due to its simplicity and ubiquity that I never thought about previously was the anecdote about the idea of making top surfaces slan…

Or you are my wife, didn't realize it wasn't flat, and now your plastic bottle is bouncing down the mountain side and part of the trash littering the place.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#315

Post by modderation »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #247
somedude895 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to embarassingly think that design was merely a matter of aesthetics until I read The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, which opened my eyes to how much thought goes into seemingly simple things. Really changed the way I look at human-designed objects. My favorite anecdote due to its simplicity and ubiquity that I never thought about previously was the anecdote about the idea of making top surfaces slan…

> idea of making top surfaces slanted in public spaces to keep people from placing empty drinking cups and such on top of them That's a low-key example of hostile architecture , isn't it? Other than preventing people from leaving cups around, this decreases the utility of public space. Everyone sometimes finds themselves suddenly needing a flat surface other than pavement for a couple of seconds or minutes. Say you'v…

I agree that those flat surfaces would be great, except you'd have to shift other peoples' sticky leftover cups and bottles out of the way first. :(

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#316

Post by al_be_back »

__float wrote: post #277
al_be_back wrote: post #276

I spent 3 hours writing this message ... that is, I started 3 hours ago, paused that immediately, then went and did other things for 2:59:30hrs, finally I came back and finished typing this textual masterpiece. She's a successful inventor & youtuber, good on her. the product is not bad actually, a great impulse buy (gifting), just not for me.

This is a very critical reply, and for what? Throwing "just not for me" at the end doesn't negate the 95% of the message that's unnecessarily harsh.

by your logic, ending your reply with "unnecessarily harsh" means your message was "unnecessarily harsh" if I didn't agree with some of the preceding sentences? such as your fictitious stats "95% of the message".

it's not for me means that I wouldn't buy the product or invest/fund it, but i saw potential in two market segments "impulse buying" and "gifting". my message was mixed and clearly stated that - usually businesses/inventors/makers like mixed feedback.

all the best.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#317

Post by cricalix »

mgaunard wrote: post #305
konschubert wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best ideas come when you make something that you really want for yourself. In 2020, I really wanted an eink calendar to hang on my wall. Still, many people built one for themselves and never turned it into a commercial product. It’s a lot of work and some of it is boring. And you have to pay for certification and worry about all that paperwork that comes with a business. It took me 3 years: https://shop.i…

For that price I can purchase 3 Google home smart displays which do all this and more. I guess the main advantage would be always-on with little to no power consumption, but all your pictures still have cables.

You're comparing the output of a small business with a multinational behemoth that has the advantages in procurement and manufacturing due to volume. What's the point of making that comparison and effectively negging someone's work?

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#318

Post by seabass-labrax »

dom96 wrote: post #230
konschubert wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best ideas come when you make something that you really want for yourself. In 2020, I really wanted an eink calendar to hang on my wall. Still, many people built one for themselves and never turned it into a commercial product. It’s a lot of work and some of it is boring. And you have to pay for certification and worry about all that paperwork that comes with a business. It took me 3 years: https://shop.i…

> And you have to pay for certification This is the thing that got me down and it seems to be the biggest barrier to entry for commercializing hardware products. The CE/FCC certification is killer.

Would you mind elaborating on what felt problematic, please? I looked into the CE requirements a few years ago and it didn't seem like a large barrier for small electronic devices - nothing that wouldn't be expected in a safe design already, such as ensuring proper earthing or using lead-free components.

I'm curious to know what you found so that I don't have any unpleasant surprises should I go ahead with a hardware product! Maybe konschubert also has experiences they could share here.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#319

Post by sagebird »

Garvi wrote: post #289

This is a solved problem. Solved by making the hook rotatable so you can hang the clothes at an angle and thus save the same amount of room as with the discussed method, without all the downsides. I wonder if that inventor was also showered in cash and attention. I wonder if it also took them 3 years.

I think there is more to it and should not be dismissed out of hand.

Upload a photo of this proposed system in action. Prove it doesn't look like a mess. See if the wastage at start and end of rack is problematic. Then upload a video of putting a random clothing item in and also removing one.

There is a reason people don't do this, try it and see.

Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]

#320

Post by seabass-labrax »

konschubert wrote: post #272
codedokode wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is only important if your product is equal to existing or worse. For example, if you find a way to make some product two times cheaper (like Uber), you won't need much marketing.

That is not true, at least not for all types of products. I make an e-paper calendar. There is nothing like it on the market. Regularly, I have customers who say "wow, I have been looking for this for years!". Some of these customers have googled for such a product before mine existed, and found that none exists. Without marketing, how would these people learn that the product they've been looking for does now exist?

How do you expect to face competition from general-purpose, high-resolution E-Ink displays appearing on the market now? They are getting to the point where it would be within the ability of an average computer hobbyist to mount one on their wall along with one of the many 'HDMI stick' computers.

Your product looks very polished already, and is considerably cheaper than such general purpose displays right now. However, the E-Ink display market is (finally) becoming mainstream, which makes me wonder where you'll go from here.

No problem if your response would be too sensitive to share in public; good luck with your business in any case!

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