Speck Design

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering for a company that builds networking products.

What challenge were you trying to address with Speck Design?

We needed help with product design and research.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Speck Design helps us in the area of product design. They’ve engaged in various stages, including concept development, detail design, coordinating and building quick prototypes, and even test coordination. The testing is done in our facilities or other labs but they have sometimes provided resources to then drive those tests and make sure if there’s any failure, why that is and what the corrective action is. They then go on and fix the issues.

They usually help in mechanical design and have used SolidWorks and GoEngineer for modeling. They use various tolerance analysis. They used Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoints for presentation and general engineering calculations.

If it’s an early program, we give them a general scope, what kind of experience we require, and what the goal is. Sometimes if it’s a well design, we’ll actually give them a design requirement. We’ll tell them how much space they have, what features we’re expecting, what the cost of the product is, etc. 

We’ll also sometimes ask them to do market research, and depending on how specialized it is, we’ll give requirement specs. Speck Design will conduct the research and present their reports. For other product design, where we have a clear marketing requirement document, we will create a product definition document (PDD). We will sometimes give them part of the PDD and tell them what we’re trying to build, the space we have, and the cost target. 

Sometimes they work side-by-side with the hardware engineers in our company to act as an extension of the internal mechanical design team.

What is the team composition?

They’ve had a team of over 15 engineers at one point but the number of people aren’t fixed. It might start with 2-3 engineers at the start and as the design matures and more detail work is required, it scales up to around 15. As things get completed, people roll off. 

How did you come to work with Speck Design?

They were a small startup and some of their founders were working at the company I was at at that time. My hiring manager was working with those people already. They were already part of the team that I joined. Subsequently, they grew and aren’t just working in networking but are working in other areas.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $5 million-$10 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2000 and the work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The reason I’ve been working with them all this time is in my evaluation, Speck Design has been successful in all their engagements. Some projects were very straightforward and sometimes there have been some hiccups along the way. At the end of the day, each and every project has been successful for us. The success metric is quality delivery on time. We’ve often had extremely aggressive schedules. They have never caused a project to slip.

How did Speck Design perform from a project management standpoint?

In most of my projects, I have had Speck Design manage the project management aspect of their deliverables. They’ve always been responsible for giving my team or myself a weekly status update on what the expectation of completion is, what they’ve accomplished, and where we’re falling behind. 

If I haven’t been happy with how things are going, I approach the account manager and bring up my concern and what I think needs to be addressed. 80% of the time, they have addressed them to my satisfaction. The other 20% of the time, I had to keep going back until they addressed it to my satisfaction.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The thing I find most impressive is that, though over the years there have been changes in different people coming in, they’ve managed to maintain their core competency. In some other companies, I’ve found that as the company evolves and people change, their capabilities also change. Speck Design has done a pretty good job in maintaining their core competency over a long period of time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The thing I wish for is something I can’t even make happen in my own team. My wishful thinking is I’d like to have the same team. Over 20 years, I’ve worked with at least 10 different teams. Even though they keep good competency, they are new people and I had to learn how to interact with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Everyone has a different working style. My style is a little more hands on. Even though I’ve given projects to spec and they are a fully capable team, I’ve stayed in very close touch with their progress, what’s going on, what challenges they’re facing, and what issues they have. That has worked well in me having the right expectation. 

Once I started engaging with them so I know how things are progressing and where things aren’t going well, I have found when I’ve done three months, six months, nine months, 12 months, 15 months, I’ve been much more in sync with the progress, issues, and solutions. I recommend others to stay in touch, understand the challenges, change requirements as appropriate so that you truly work as a team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Chief Product Officer of a very small medical device start-up, SwellStop, that was borne out of a Stanford Biodesign graduate course.

For what projects/services did your company hire Speck Design?

We developed a functional, yet crude, works-like prototype that required design optimization for the eventual production and deployment in a small clinical trial. We hired Speck Design for their product design and development expertise.

What were your goals for this project?

Understanding that we had a limited budget, our goal was to brainstorm alternative approaches to achieving our desired mechanism of action, to critically examine our existing design, and to collect general advice regarding the product development process in the medical device technology space.

How did you select Speck Design?

We reached out to a number of local and California-based product development firms based on online portfolios, reviews, and other information. We spoke over the phone with two of these firms and met Speck Design, which was more local, in person at their office space.

While we had good phone conversations with the former two firms, we felt an immediate connection to Speck Design. Specifically, we met with Denise Pliskin and Michael Sprauve, who were both incredibly attentive, warm, thoughtful, and generous with their time, extending our meeting by 50% to continue the exchange of ideas.

The two were genuinely excited about what we were doing and clearly had a lot of industry experience, giving us the confidence to work more with them.

Describe the project in detail.

Initially, Speck served more in an advisory role as we were transitioning from a student project to a company. We met several times in the first few months to review our project progress and for Speck to provide direction.

In the beginning of 2019, we began exploring alternative approaches to achieving our desired mechanism of action. This served as a way to step back and re-evaluate the solution space to ensure that we were using the most efficient, reliable, and cost-effective method for swelling reduction about the ankle.

The added benefit was that any new approaches could serve to broaden our intellectual property. In parallel, Speck reviewed our existing approach/design, identifying several features of our circuit that were unnecessary or sub-optimal.

Speck continued to provide strategic support as well over this period and was helpful in preparing supplementary resources (i.e. scope of work documents) for our June 2019 NSF SBIR application.

What was the team composition?

Michael Sprauve (President/CEO) and Denise Pliskin (Senior Director Product Development Strategy) were the two Speck members with whom we primarily interfaced. Both were present in nearly all meetings and calls, which I found quite impressive given their senior/leadership roles at the firm. We also had one or two additional Speck members join some of the brainstorming meetings.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our early strategy meetings helped our team think more about the journey of a product. Speck provided more than a dozen alternative and diverse approaches to achieving our desired mechanism of action, some of which were quite clever.

These were pitched to us in a meeting with sketches, background research, and room for discussion. As mentioned previously, Speck also critically reviewed our existing design/approach and identified several areas for improvement, efficiency, and cost-savings.

Given our limited funds, Speck provided valuable design and strategic device. They were transparent and laid out a plan for future steps (timeline, work involved, and pricing) for when we might secure additional funding.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Michael, Denise, and the other Speck members with whom we interfaced were really transparent, communicative, and collaborative. In-person meetings felt conversational and productive. Scheduling was easy and flexible, and all were responsive to emails.

We also set up a Google Drive for shared resources as well as a Slack channel (did not end up using this much, but there was flexibility in communication).

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was really impressed that we interfaced directly and regularly with Speck Design leadership, who were more invested and thoughtful than one would expect given our very early-stage start-up status and relatively small project budget.

Michael and Denise have a great deal of experience, expertise, and insight, yet they also have a great sense of humility and patience that undoubtedly made our meetings more productive, creative, and engaging for all involved. In short, I felt that Speck cared about us, our needs, and our future success.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We had a great experience with Speck, and I look forward to working with them in the future!