Concept Development
Choose the Right Concept Before you Engineer it
We explore the idea widely through sketching, early CAD and working prototypes, then converge on a single concept you can commit to. You leave this stage knowing what you are building, why it works and what it will take to make it.
“Enki have been fantastic to work with. Fast, diligent, and very pleasant throughout the process. Most importantly, patient considering I’ve never developed hardware before. They've made a complex process approachable and always kept things moving. Highly recommend!”
Reed Rosenberg, Founder at Cura
100+ years of Dyson experience · 90% ex-Dyson engineers · 80+ projects
What we do
Concept Design & Sketching
We explore multiple design directions through hand sketches, digital concepts and early 3D CAD, testing form, function and feasibility before anything is committed.
Fundamental Rigs and Validation
Where risk needs reducing early, we build fundamental rigs: focused prototypes designed to prove specific elements of the concept before full development begins. This catches problems when they cost hundreds, not tens of thousands.
Concept Selection
Where risk needs reducing early, we build fundamental rigs: focused prototypes designed to prove specific elements of the concept before full development begins. This catches problems when they cost hundreds, not tens of thousands.
Why it matters
Most of your final product cost is locked in at concept stage, long before a production drawing exists.
Material choices, form factor, manufacturing approach, component count. These are all set during concept development. Get them wrong and every later stage is engineering around a flawed foundation. Get them right and everything downstream moves faster, costs less and performs better.
This is why we put ex-Dyson engineers on concept work rather than saving them for detailed design. The people making these calls have made them before, at scale, on products that reached shelves.
01 Explore the space
We generate multiple concept directions rather than presenting one and defending it. Each is assessed against your commercial goals, your manufacturing constraints and what your customer actually needs.
How We Work
02 You choose, with the trade offs visible
Every direction comes with its consequences stated: what it costs, what it risks, what it rules out later. You make the call with the full picture, and we don't move forward until the direction is agreed, understood and commercially sound.
03 Validate before you invest
Where the concept carries technical risk, we build fundamental rigs to test the specific elements that worry us: mechanisms, materials, tolerances. You see the concept work before committing to full engineering.
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Concept development defines what you're going to build. Full product design and engineering makes it manufacturable. Think of concept as the architectural drawings — essential, but not the same as building the house. We offer both as part of the full 5D journey, or as standalone phases.
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Typically three to five initial directions, narrowed to one refined concept through structured evaluation. We don't present fifty loose sketches — we present considered options with clear reasoning behind each one.
Frequently Asked Questions
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A fundamental rig is a focused prototype built to test a specific element of the concept — a mechanism, a material behaviour, a structural assumption. It's not a complete product prototype. It's a targeted experiment to reduce risk before full development starts.
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Yes, and many clients start here. A defined concept with a validated brief and clear cost estimate is valuable on its own — even if you take it elsewhere for engineering. That said, most clients continue with us because the same team that shaped the concept also engineers it, which eliminates the translation losses that happen when you hand a brief to a new team.