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Indeed. The implication here is that, generally, "Hardware and Product Design" projects always fail. But rather than ban them entirely, they are simply preventing anyone from "marketing" them. So you can still do a hardware project, you just have to sell it via the plan and specs only, without sexy adornment. That seems fair.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that they always fail. I think that there are a lot of people who don't quite understand the bridge that must be crossed from garage prototype to shippable product.

In many ways, they don't know what they don't know. They don't do enough work ahead of time, set their goals too low, don't understand the real business equation behind their project and then find themselves in the proverbial "be careful what you wish for" situation.

After all, getting a million dollars for a project that requires two million is not a good thing, is it?.

How would you suggest someone without any experience in physical products get that required knowledge? A friend and I have an idea for a physical product and we're in the process of building the garage prototype now. When that's finished and if we think it's a fit for Kickstarter, what resources should we find so we don't set goals too low, etc?

Good question. A lot of it really depends on the nature of the product. Is it purely mechanical or does it have electronics? Plastics? Metal? Any optics?

The set of disciplines to be mastered could be daunting. In such cases it is probably best to hire a product designer to help you get from a garage prototype to a manufacturable product or an interim product that is manufactured using an approach that is closest to production.

If you could provide a little more info as to the nature of the product I can certainly take the time to give you some pointers. I don't need to know what it is. What I need is an understanding of the technologies that you might require and if there's anything really critical in the design. For example, if it has lenses it might be critical to have them precisely aligned. Does it produce a lot of heat? What kind of power will it require? Batteries or powered off the wall?

The other important bit of data would be your current skill set (you and your friend).

Tools: For nearly all electro-mechanical products you will need specific industry-standard tools in order to be able to communicate with manufacturers and job shops. For example, I use Solidworks for mechanical design as well as thermal and flow simulation and Altium Designer for schematic and circuit board design. If the design involves programmable electronics you might be into tools such as Xilinx or Altera for FPGA's and Keil or other compilers for embedded stuff.

Lastly. Where are you? The approach might change a bit based on your geographic location and the locally available resources. You might, for example, be able to ping your local university for help.

So I'll never get my Hexy the Hexapod kit or my Ouya console?

I got my Glif. Then later, I bought a second one.

I'm doubtful you'll get an Ouya to begin with.

But the point is that they have to have something to show; the Ouya itself should have had some hardware/software going. As is they were funded without even proper prototypes or software and people think they'll be getting one in March?

If you actually get an Ouya in March 2013 that has an app store you can buy games from, I'll ask PG to give you all my karma.

If the point is to make sure that the backers do not make decisions uninformed, why not take time to add a curated risk score. This way, the projects will be responsible in providing proper evidence about how far they are in production, and you can help us figure out if they are really on track. For instance, a project which can provide a list of parts, is probably further in the process than one which only has CAD sketches; but that doesn't mean that people wouldn't be interested in backing the project in its infancy. It shouldn't be too hard for you to come up with an acceptable process of evaluation, and hire experts to do it. Heck, we pay a cut to KS anyway, why not throw in a better service in return.

That's probably way more involvement than KS is willing to deal with. Also, no matter how many disclaimers they put, the curated score would put some of the liability on KickStarter's side, which I'm sure they definitely would not want.

If KS is serious in what they are doing, they shouldn't try patches like putting arbitrary rules, but take action to solve the problem directly. Project funding is their core business after all. Apple does it with their App Store, and without their curation, probably the store would have turned into a bigger garbage pile than it is now, to the point of being unusable.

> Apple does it with their App Store, and without their curation, probably the store would have turned into a bigger garbage pile than it is now, to the point of being unusable.

Ummm, I know its not your primary point, but I'm not entirely sure about this statement. Look at the android app store (Google play) in comparison. It doesn't have that same curation as the Apple version, and certainly there are a lot of useless apps on it, but it is by no standard "unusable". In fact, in my experience, I prefer looking for apps on the Google version than the Apple because for almost any purpose its easy to find an amateur low cost or free app. This generally isn't the case in the apple version

Then people just have a greater reason to complain if a project with a low risk score fails.

"I would imagine that it would still be OK to show renderings and animations so long as the actual physical product is shown as well."

From the page, this does not appear to be the case. It's stated very clearly:

"Product renderings are prohibited. Product images must be photos of the prototype as it currently exists."

It should be interesting to see though how people creatively get around this prohibition.

A diagram isn't a product render. It'll be interesting to see how vigorous the enforcement is for all the grey area in between.

I suspect that the real target is photo realistic renderings. I mean, one of the meanings of "rendering" is a drawing. I doubt they will have a problem with a patent-style sketch showing what the product is intended to be.

I'll find out soon enough. I think I might have the time to put up one hardware project on Kickstarter in about a month or so. The actual product will be shown in finished form. I'd like to use Solidworks animation to show some of the clever mechanical design that makes it work. Clearly there is no way to do this with the actual product as it would require aluminum to be transparent. There's also the case of some shots that are simply impossible to achieve any other way (animated cross sections). My guess is that the KS guys probably get this and are simply looking to host more legitimate, for lack of a better word, hardware projects. I can't see anyone who really knows how to execute on hardware projects have any issues with these restrictions.

I'll certainly consult with the KS guys when ready and see what they say.

Transparent aluminum isn't that big of a deal. Scotty whipped up a recipe on an old Macintosh in like five minutes.

Using a quaint keyboard, no less.

That's true. He even talked to the mouse in anticipation of Siri.

Seems like they could get 100% of the ambiguity reduction they are probably going for with the "no renderings" rule by requiring that any renderings have a standard label. Some very noticeable and tasteful diagonal bar saying "Rendering" across the corner of the image would do nicely. Perhaps you could/should propose that to them as a sensible middle-ground position.

I really like the "you have to show what you have now" part of the requirement, but getting a look at where the creator wants to get to as a goal is also very useful for choosing projects. And your cutaway animation also sounds like a knock-down case for why renderings are needed sometimes.

I agree, this is a good move on their part. I am working on a hardware project myself, and it has taken me a lot of effort to learn the ins and outs of manufacturing, machining, CAD, and so forth (I am just a software engineer). Ultimately, things almost are always more complex and expensive than you would initially anticipate.

I agree. The recent episodes with the unlikely LIFX project has probably set fire to Kickstarters' observations. This is good.