Don Rickert Design

This is Now a Don Rickert Design Site

I know; it does not make sense. The reality is that this site was a consulting-oriented site that would show up when potential consulting clients Googled "Don Rickert" and a bunch of other keywords related to design research, consumer research, marketing research, usability, etc.

We have kept the site and its resource articles active, because we know that many students of Industrial Design, Design Research, Consumer Research, Ergonomics / Human Factors, Market Research, Usability and Ethnography use our articles as resources.

We no longer seek work in those areas, but will, of course take on projects, but they have to be interesting, pay well and be ethical. Also, in order to protect ourselves from the typical situation where consulting clients lose their funding, a substantial severence payout in the the event of premature contract completion is part of all of any consulting contract we would consider. Obviously telling you about this is NOT marketing. If you want the best consulting in the areas that we used to seek engagements, email us your proposal...we DO NOT participate in competitive bidding.

So, until we have this site in shape, go to Adventurous Muse (www.AdventurousMuse.com) as your home base for the new Don Rickert Design (DESIGN ONLY...NO CONSULTING). For your information Don Rickert Design designs and makes cutting edge muscial instruments, furniture and other fascinating "niche" products.

Don Rickert Research & Design

Don Rickert Research & Design, a DBA for Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC, is a full-service multi-disciplinary design research and product design firm with TWO lines of business. It is essential that you understand this. We are located in Atlanta, GA.

Consulting Services: Learn More...

Focus is on solving your most challenging product development problems through observation, research. Don Rickert Research & Design Consulting provides New Product Development (NPD) services to companies that want to create a successful new and/or breakthrough product (or fix a flawed or outmoded existing product). Services include: Usability, User Experience, Design, Product Development and Ethnography.

Our Own Product Development (Primarily Ground-Breaking Musical Instruments): Learn more...

Doing business under the name Don Rickert Design(tm), we invent, design, produce and sell innovative musical instruments under two primary brand names:

1. Don Rickert Design: Mostly electric and electronic musical instruments, but also some cutting-edge modern acoustic instruments, all designed by Dr. Don Rickert or in collaboration with other top musical instrument designers.
2. Old Mill Musical Instruments: Mostly acoustic instruments of a more "traditional" (but cutting-edge) type, all designed by Dr. Don Rickert or in collaboration with other top musical instrument designers.

Don Rickert Design operates two primary online stores.

1. The first is The Adventurous Muse Store (motto: "Working to be the most interesting musical instrument store in the universe!"). The informative website and blog and "landing page" is The Adventurous Muse.
2. The second store, actually a department within the Adventurous Muse Store, is called Musicians' Sutlery and exists to serve the needs of 19th Century "living historians", selling authentic replicas of mid-19th Century musical instruments and accessories.

About Don Rickert Research & Design Consulting (Summary)

Due to the demands of our own in-house product development endeavors, we are no longer actively seeking consulting engagements. We continue to do all of the activities described, but primarily ONLY for our own products. We will accept consulting work from qualified customers who seek us out and are prepared to pay our our 50% (of the estimated full cost of the project) retainer prior to commencment of our work. Rates vary according to the work, but average at about $175/hour.

Musical instrument, furniture, adventure gear, rowing craft and unique niche products are our preferred consulting domains.

We are a Product Design, Design Research, Consumer Insights, UX (User Experience) and NPD (New Product Development) firm...Yes that includes Usability Evaluation, Survey Design & Analysis and Quantitative Data Analysis!

Putting it as simply and directly as possible, our primary business to date has been to help other companies like yours...

• To understand what your customers, consumers and/or users really care about
• To determine whether or not they care about what you are planning to sell them.
• To discover what it will take to bring your new product vision in line with your customers' and consumers' true needs and desires (and what are they willing to pay?)
• Design and test alternative embodiments of new products with real people before the development budget is wasted on a loser!

Basically, we do not participate in any of the common practices used to obtain free services (we have seen them all and can sniff them out in minutes...trust us on this)

• Free consulting...our billing clock starts after the first 30 minutes of discussion, regardless of the discussion channel (e.g. telephone, email, "informal" lunch chat, etc.)
• Participate in initial discussions with staff members who DO NOT have final budget authority for the potential project
• Participate in "bake-offs" or any other type of competitive proposal and bidding process
• Evaluation of projects that are already finished
• "Rubber stamp" your solution that you have already decided to pursue

Contact us NOW: don@DonRickertDesign.com

Before wasting a lot of time on finding what may appear to be the best bargain, check out what some of our clients have to say about us (see Endorsements and Raves)

Want more details about our methods, process, and so forth? We've got your details RIGHT HERE!

Don Rickert Design Getting Back to its Core Business--Design!

The adventurous business climate has prompted us to rethink our business model and tactics. While we will continue our work in the area of ground-breaking musical instrument (Adventurous Muse) and high-performance rowing craft designs, we will also be renewing our emphasis on being a full-service multi-disciplinary design research and product design firm.

Dr. Don Rickert ponders our business future...

Click on the photos for larger views.

For the observant Industrial Designers among you, that sure as heck is a genuine Eams Chair!

Background: Strategic Businesss Marketing On-line

We are no longer seeking consulting engagements in this area.

A number of years ago a book, The Attention Economy, was published. It described a coming time when the coin of the realm would be getting noticed. For a business, you have to be noticed by a whole lot of people who love what you are selling in order to make money.

Our first experience in opening an online store several years ago is familiar to any first-timer in the online business arena...NO VISITORS. With the experience of opening several of our own online stores (and lots of research), as well as numerous business websites and blogs (our sites are usually a combination of website and blog...there are reasons for this) behind us, we have become accidental experts in the fine art of getting noticed on the web.

Getting noticed translates to lots of visits to your sites. If you have the right product or products, visits translate to business, provided you build your site to make it easy for people to do business with you. It should be noted that determining the right product or products is difficult in a Recession...but there is a big difference between difficult and impossible.

People have asked us what we do to generate the high levels of traffic to our business sites and online stores, which we have been able to do. In good times, these high traffic levels translate to lots of sales for the kind of products we sell online (high-end consulting services and expensive musical instruments and accessories). We have sold about 100 specialty violins designed by our studio over a two-year period, and that entire period has been a Recession in the luxury goods market. The normal annual output for a small lutherie (violin-making workshop) is in the low 20s. In other words, our output has been several hundred % greater than the norm.

In addition to our musical instrument endeavors, we have also obtained several lucrative design consulting contracts during the same period. Selling of design consulting is far different (and more dependent on personal contacts and reputation) than sale of tangible goods; therefore, Strategic Business Marketing On-Line focuses more on tangible goods and what we call essential services, such as catering, plumbing, and so forth.

Details on Don Rickert Design In-House Product Development

In addition to work for clients, we invent many new Don Rickert Design^(tm) products in-house, being very careful to avoid conflicts of interest with our work for clients.

Some of our in-house New Product Development is self-funded and some involves joint ventures and limited external funding. We tend to avoid external funding, as primary ownership of our inventions is key to our business plan.

It is no secret that Don Rickert Design has unique expertise in the design, manufacture and marketing of innovative musical instruments, primarily bowed instruments (acoustic and electric violins and synthesizers with a violin-like interface). In fact, Dr. Don Rickert is internationally known in the field of musical instrument invention and innovation.

Some might find this musical instrument angle surprising. It is no different, however, than Cox Enterprises owning the world's largest used automobile buying and re-selling (to dealers) enterprise, Manheim Auctions. Nor is it different from Clabber Girl, a brand of baking powder, baking soda and corn starch, which also owns and operates the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Indy Racing League.

Would you really want a product development firm that does not invent, manufacture (through a complex network of boutique CNC, laser-cutting, carbon fiber fabrication and violin-making workshops in the U.S.) and market its own products helping you in your own product development efforts?

A key business partner in our musical instrument arena has been Fiddarci Lutherie (lutherie is the proper name for a stringed instrument making workshop), located in Helena, AL. Another critical business partner has been International Violin Company, which serves as a broker to specialty workshops in Germany, Eastern Europe and Hong Kong for the manufacture of some of the parts, such as the distinctive necks used for Don Rickert-designed violins.

The current main website/blog for Don Rickert Design musical instruments is www.AdventurousMuse.com. There are several online retail outlets where both Don Rickert Design, as well as instruments and accessories from other makers are sold. The primary online store is www.AdventurousMuseStore.com; however, we also own storefronts on Amazon.com and Etsy.com.

Other In-House Product Development Areas:

In addition to the musical instrument development described above, Don Rickert Design has considerable expertise in rowing craft design and construction. We are "sitting on" three original designs for high-performance boats intended for ocean, bay and rough river rowing until we can get the rest of our business running on a new "troubled times" business plan.

Another reason we are waiting is that high-performance rowing craft are "luxury" items and launching them now (no pun intended) would not be prudent, even if investment resources were available, which they are not.

Process

Since every consulting engagement is different, and our clients have their own product development processes, there is no single process. That being said, when developing our own products we do follow a specific NPD process, summarized on the diagram below. The diagram is a good way to organize communication of all of the things we can do FOR YOU. Click on the diagram for more...

Introducing Strategic Business Marketing On-Line

We no longer offer this service.

The website thumbnail you might have clicked on to get here is an image of the current project for Strategic Business Marketing On-Line: Small Business Specialists, a website designed and launched for the sole purpose of selling s single home without the assistance of a Real Estate Agent.

Click on the thumbnail image on the left for a full size view of a screen capture of the home page. You can look at the actual live website as well.

Our new line of business, Strategic Business Marketing On-Line, is dedicated to:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Traffic generation
• USEFUL analytics

...for your business web site.

A number of years ago a book, The Attention Economy, was published. It described a coming time when the coin of the realm would be getting noticed. That time is NOW! For a business, you have to be noticed by a whole lot of people who love what you are selling in order to make money. Click here for some background details on this topic and more of our story.

Colleagues have asked us what we do to generate very high levels of traffic to our business sites and online stores. Helping other small businesses with websites to increase their SEO (i.e. get listed on page 1 of Google searches), generate lots of visitors to their sites and constantly improving visibility by proper use of the right web traffic analysis tools is the mission of Strategic Business Marketing On-Line. We can also help business that do not have a website to have a great one!

Click here for a list and description of our Strategic Business Marketing On-Line services, as well as some examples of achieving astounding web visibility in very short periods of time.

In-House Self-Funded and Investor-Funded Product Development

It is no secret that Don Rickert Design has unique expertise in the design, manufacturer and marketing of innovative musical instruments. It is indeed true that, in addition to our work for clients, we invent many new Don Rickert Design(tm) products in-house, being very careful to avoid conflicts of interest with our work for clients.

You might find our musical instrument ventures surprising. To read more about this and other in-house product development, click here.

Would you really want a product development firm that does not invent, manufacture and market its own products helping you with any aspect of your own product development efforts?

About Don Rickert Research & Design (the details)...

We are a Design Research, Consumer Insights, UX (User Experience) and NPD (New Product Development) Firm...sometimes our type of company is called a "full-service Industrial Design" firm.

See our Portfolio of mostly Interactive and Transactional Systems, as well as the other Portfolios using the links on the left of the screen...Interactive and Transactional Systems are a VERY small part of the product universe!

Contact: drickert@bellsouth.net; (404) 713-3750

Don Rickert Research & Design is a division, often called a "DBA" (doing business as...) of Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC. Don Rickert Research & Design helps other companies to create successful goods and services.

We are a Research and Design firm that provides New Product Development (NPD) services to companies that want to create a successful new product (or fix a flawed or outmoded existing product).

Much of our work is in the basic areas of interactive media (e.g. websites) and online transactional systems, such as those used in the financial services and supply chain industries. We do, however, often assist in the development of physical products. We also invent, design and develop our own products.

Often beginning with Ethnography (observing and interviewing people on their own turf), we identify what is missing in your customers' lives—opportunities for you to fill critical gaps between what is and what could be…if you only knew. But we don't stop there—we work with your teams to transform those previously hidden opportunities into breakthrough products. Download Don Rickert Research & Design Ethnography Examples with Design Insights

Much of our work is in the realm of USER EXPERIENCE (UX), with an emphasis on usefulness, usability and appeal (desirability), the three main components of VALUE to customers. Drawing from our extensive experience with interactive products as well as physical goods, we carry out the appropriate QUANTITATIVE, QUALITATIVE and HYBRID (a mix of quantitative and qualitative research, such as usability evaluation...we are one of the rare firms with expert skill in advanced quantitative methods as well as qualitative approaches) consumer research services. Then, we integrate the discoveries from the various approaches into ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS that you can use.

Some of the methods we employ are:

• usability evaluation (more...)
• card-sorting studies and analysis (called Cluster Analysis) to determine optimal terminology (e.g. names for buttons and controls, etc.) (more...)
• observing real people doing real things with current versions of YOUR product and competitors' products (ethnography, depth interviewing, etc.) (more...)
• prototyping, model building (more...)
• interviewing (structured as well as Depth Interviewing)
• questionnaire design, implementation and analysis
• and all the rest... (see Methods & Technical Expertise)

Our work boils down to discovering what you really need to know to win with a groundbreaking product, just as we have helped a number of other companies to create successful goods and services.

Types of Organizations and Products We Have Worked On

 

Types of Organizations Broadcast Media Technology Telecommunications Camping and Adventure Gear Communications Publishing Energy Research & Development Interactive Television        Consumer Electronics Cable TV CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Insurance Medical Higher Education Financial Services Professional Services Interactive Media Supply Chain Management Food Retail (i.e. Grocery Stores) Musical Instrument Manufacturers Urban Planning & Design

Types of Products Bank automation Online Rate Quote for auto insurance Teller systems Self-service point-of-sale systems ATMs Medical informatics Wireless devices and other consumer products Handheld remote controls Interactive television user experience Online insurance Consumer banking, and other forms of e-commerce such as online retail Musical instrument design (e.g. electric violins, baritone violins and ground-breaking acoustic instruments) Rowing innovations Web-based Transactional Systems (Client-Server and Hybrid Client-Server        applications running in web browsers) Corporate Websites (informational) Training Systems

What Does Ethnography Look Like?

Much of the value we add comes from years' of experience in observing REAL PEOPLE doing REAL THINGS in the REAL WORLD...this is often called Ethnography. The skill, experience and formal training for doing ethnography correctly is ALMOST NEVER found in-house; although, you may feel that it is. It would be an exceedingly rare organization that has qualified in-house ethnography expertise.  See our postings on Ethnography by clicking the Ethnography category on the right of the screen.

So what does Ethnography look like?: The short answer is that it looks like real life. The photos that follow with accompanying commentary may help to communicate the different variations of Ethnography.

Don Rickert Research & Design Front End Design Research Services

Solve the Right Problem with the Right Product!

Product development is often about solving a problem or fulfilling an unmet consumer need through innovation.  But, how do you know you are  solving the right problem?  Ethnography and other front-end product development research are tools that have been carefully developed to identify which problems and unmet needs offer the greatest opportunities.

Front-End Product Development Research reduces the cost and duration of product development programs, while minimizing the risk of launching the wrong product.

Our services include:

• Ethnographic Study and Analysis
• Depth Interviewing
• “Trendspotting” and Analysis
• Group Idea Generation
• Opportunity / Needs Analysis

At the core of all of these services is rigorous observation and engagement of sufficient numbers of real people (customers, consumers and end-users) to support actionable product development insights.

Benefits of Front End Product Development Research include:

1. Accurate understanding of the people who might buy your new product or products
2. Identification of the gaps between current products (yours as well as your competitors’) and consumers’ unmet needs and desires
3. Practical insights into how to fulfill theses unmet needs and desires with a better product or products
4. Project teams empowered with critical knowledge to ensure a more efficient and effective product development program