The most important decisions in a physical product are made before anything is designed. At the configuration stage, we look at the product strategy, the internal components, the proportions and the way people will use it, all at the same time. Our experience lets us anticipate the mechanical and technological challenges early, and make the critical decisions that turn them into part of the design instead of problems found later. When design and engineering work as one team from that first stage, the product gets a foundation that is efficient to build, has real aesthetic potential and is easy to use. That is why, at TRIM, we keep industrial design and engineering under one roof.
Every project starts with questions, not sketches. Who is the product for? What must it do better than anything else on the market? What cannot be compromised: cost, size, safety, the feeling in the hand? A startup preparing its first product and a global company extending a product line need different answers, but both need them before the first line is drawn.
This is where a shared team makes its first difference. When the people who will shape the product and the people who will engineer it hear the same goals from the start, the strategy becomes a common language. Nothing gets lost in a handover, because there is no handover.
Before there is a design, there is a configuration: the way batteries, boards, motors, sensors and mechanisms are arranged inside the product, and the way that arrangement meets the user’s hand. This stage decides the proportions, the weight, the cost and much of the experience.
The critical part is seeing many parameters at once. An arrangement that is efficient to assemble may lead to awkward proportions. A beautiful proportion may leave no room for a component. A comfortable grip may complicate the sealing. Experience is what lets a team weigh all of these together and create several options, each one efficient, with aesthetic potential and easy to use. We then compare their potential and their risks, and choose the best option and the best path forward.
It doesn’t look like design yet, but it is the foundation of every good design.
Every product has mechanical and technological challenges: water and dust sealing, heat, tolerances between injection-moulded parts, the durability of a mechanism, the cost of tooling. They will appear sooner or later. The question is whether they appear on the screen, when they are cheap to solve, or at the factory, when they are expensive.
Our approach is to anticipate them and take the critical decisions early: which technology to use, what to validate first, which risk to attack before investing in the rest, when to freeze the design. In each case we look for the most efficient and lowest-risk way to reach the result. When designers and engineers take these decisions together, each one protects the form, the use and the manufacturing at the same time. The challenges become part of the design, not a compromise forced on it later.
Many companies hire a design studio for the look and an engineering firm to make it work. On paper it sounds efficient. In practice, the design is often approved before anyone has resolved what goes inside it. When engineering starts, the product grows, a shape cannot be moulded, a detail has to change, and the original intent slowly disappears. Each loop back costs weeks, and sometimes the product that reaches the market is not the one that was approved.
Under one roof, the same team carries the idea from strategy to production, so the product keeps what made it good.
Annabella’s breast pump had to bring together a complex suction mechanism and the physical and emotional needs of mothers. While exploring the user experience, before defining the look, we discovered that the connection between the cone and the bottle could also secure the main body. One decision solved the mechanical integration of the main parts and created an intuitive experience. Fully rounded volumes, reminiscent of holding a baby, completed the design. The pump received FDA 510(k) clearance in 2023, and in 2025 the Annabella Double was named Portable Breast Pump Product of the Year at the Baby Innovation Awards. See the Annabella project.
TytoHome lets families run medical exams at home, checking ears, throat, heart, lungs, skin and temperature together with a doctor. The configuration challenge was to bring five exam tools into one handheld device. A dedicated connector locks each tool with a click, handling both the mechanical fit and the electrical contact, so TytoCare can add new clinical modules over time. The same team shaped a sculpted, child-friendly grip, refined the split lines and the sealing around the camera window, and prepared every part for injection moulding. The device was FDA-cleared in 2016 and won the iF Gold Design Award in 2017. See the TytoCare project.
Working under one roof doesn’t end with the CAD files. We collaborate with manufacturers from the early stages and bring their feedback into the design, which saves time and cost. When the first tooling samples arrive, the team that designed the product is the one that reviews them. For TytoCare, we reviewed the T1 and T2 samples on site in China, which helped bring the product to market faster.
For a startup, one team means one budget, one schedule and one point of responsibility, with fewer surprises between funding milestones. For an established company, it means a partner that works as an extension of its own R&D, from early concepts to production support. In both cases the benefit is the same: the critical decisions are taken once, by people who see the whole product.
Since 2008, we have taken hundreds of products from concept to mass production, for startups and global leaders such as Mobileye, TytoCare and SolarEdge. If you are planning a new physical product, explore our industrial design and engineering services or write to us using the form below. We’d be happy to talk about it.