Sean Hsu shows how to visualize an MVP fast using CAD, rendering software, and stock assets. He walks through a microbubble washing machine example, explains rendering techniques like lighting and reflections, and discusses copyright and cost tradeoffs for imagery.
Chapters
So this is point of view. And MVP. MVP is a very fun thing that— so actually I can show you what I've built in 10 days. So then you can try to do the same thing as me. Oops. Does anyone of you know this password? No.
No?
How many of you can do cat?
What?
Yeah, cat drawings. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. OK. How fast can you— let's say if I need this, how fast can you draw a cat with this?
A complete design or just like inside of—
Just the external.
Most of 20 minutes or so.
20 minutes? Yeah, that's great. Do you guys do rendering as well?
Yeah.
OK, so what I did is try to— I built a— oops, it's still opening up. So this was one of the ideas I tried to validate to the market. It was a hand wash machine. I did rendering, but one of the tricks here is I typically don't— if you can see it here. So for this design, I typically don't spend time to draw the whole spinner. I actually just downloaded this from GrabCAD. GrabCAD.com and then just modified it.
That's true.
So it's like 2 minutes. And then for the design as well, so this picture I was trying to tell my client about how this washing machine will be like. Is it like a washing machine like this, or is it like a separate one? So having this, I don't actually need to spend time to build the whole one. I can just render it in 5, 10 minutes, and then just buy this photo. So a lot of copyright issues in the United States. So one of the tricks is I go to shutterstock.com.
Shutterstock. Stock.
Most of their library is pretty full of content. So you can just find a particular user. You don't need to hire a model. One of my friends, he actually spent— so this friend, Gargopel.
Gargopel.
OK, here we go. So like if you're looking for— so this is a startup. They do goggles with—
Snow depth.
Goggles with like UI, like AR, exactly. You can see the speed. So they spent a very decent amount of money I don't want to reveal to take this video. So what I'm trying to say is anything here without this, you can actually buy it from Shadow. Shutterstock.com, like $69. And it's so fast, you don't even need to hire a photographer or spend time on the mountain. They actually spent 2 months with a lot of money to get this video done. But I was telling them, this kind of video you could just find online. Google Pal tracks your stats. So I don't want to spend too much time advertising this stuff. But same thing as here. It's like this photo, I don't actually need to hire this model. I can still use this on my website. And this is just like a quick rendering. So it feels like a legitimate product now.
What tool are you using?
I use KeyShot.
KeyShot.
Yeah, K-E-Y and then KeyShot. This guy. It's amazing. It's pretty easy to learn. And for the icon, so this page I was trying to explain what is the difference between the washing machine and my washing machine. So the idea was I used microbubble to generate— generator to generate microbubbles to Increase the effectiveness of detergent.
Can I ask just a little quick question? You were talking about the programs. What do you use for modeling?
Oh, I use SolidWorks. SolidWorks is kind of OK. It's pretty fast. So in this page, I was trying to explain microbubble function so then the detergent can be more foamy than other washing machines. I use ultrasonic cleaning, I use magnetic control spinners, and I use UV disinfections. So a lot of websites right now, they use icon. Icon is a killer for industrial designers. I know Alexander's job could be just designing icons for a whole day or a whole month. So I actually know a lot of designers from Google, Apple, and Tesla, Facebook. They all spend a lot of time there, but what you do here is like, You can spend 5 minutes just to, and probably $5 to replicate that for your MVP. I'm trying to make the MVP in 2 or 3 days, but it looks super professional as like you have a whole full team to work with for you. So try flaticon.com. They have all kinds of icons. Icon. It's pretty awesome. And let's say UV. So there's a lot of UVs. If I'm having a product ready to UV, I can just get this guy. And then you can either— you can change your color too. So let me go to that point later. So you can change your color to whatever color point you are using. And this kind of color code is universal. So you just remember whatever is on your logo, just use the same one. And so once you download, again, for copyright, if you feel like— let's see. So if you feel like you are actually going to buy a lot of advertisement and then to spread spread out your website, then you better spend just $10 per month to get the copyright. But if you feel like you are going only to share to maybe 50, 100 of your potential users, then I would just download it and put it there. I mean, don't quote from me, but that's like everyone do. Just do it here. But for this website, I actually do it here because I know I'm going to bite everyone.
Advertisement.
So this is another page I built for MVP. Icon and more rendering. And real quick about the secret of rendering, just spend more time to create more dots about the light. So there are green lights, purple lights, and yellow lights. So it looks like actual clear glass. It's not like the fake stuff. The same thing here as well. I do a lot of lighting here, so you can feel like it's something exists in the same space.
