Hardware and Connected Products

What this is for

Keep the customer reason attached to hardware decisions. Specky helps you collect evidence, understand the buyer and user, test assumptions, and draft the work—not design a circuit or approve a production release.

When this helps

• Service reports, installer notes, and prototype observations live in different tools.
• The purchaser, operator, installer, and service technician need different things.
• An expensive revision gets committed before the riskiest assumption is tested.
• Device, firmware, app, and cloud teams lose the reasoning during handoffs.

How it works

Choose Physical product for hardware or Connected product for a device with software in onboarding or Settings → Product. This saved context guides chat, ICP, idea validation, and feature-marketing drafts. It does not import data or enable a CAD or manufacturing integration. Connect a supported source or add your own observations to the Product Graph, then use the same discovery and planning tools with product-specific constraints. Keep approved designs, parts, production records, and formal verification in your existing engineering systems.

Before you start

• Your product, lifecycle stage, and the people who buy, use, install, or service it.
• Real support conversations, interview notes, return reasons, or prototype observations. Remove sensitive information you do not need.
• Known constraints: operating environment, battery life, component availability, target cost, and service access. Mark unknowns explicitly.
• A focused decision, such as whether offline setup belongs in the next sensor revision.

What you should see

• An ICP draft that distinguishes buyers from users, with evidence and uncertainty to review.
• A validation plan with assumptions, participant criteria, an experiment, and decision conditions.
• A draft requirement or PRD with the customer reason, constraints, acceptance criteria, and open questions.
• A planning scenario and launch brief you can review with engineering and commercial owners. These are not certification, manufacturing approval, or proof of demand.

Try it now

1. Select the product type in onboarding or Settings → Product. Existing software workspaces keep their current default until you change it.
2. Bring in a small set of real observations through a supported integration, file import, or manual signal. Include the source and context: who observed it, which product revision, and under what conditions.
3. Open ICP & Positioning. Describe the buyer, user, and product stage, then review each segment against the sources. Edit assumptions instead of accepting them as facts.
4. Open Idea Validation and enter one idea: “Let installers commission the sensor without internet access.” Include your constraints and select the relevant ICP segment.
5. Review the proposed research and experiment before creating or distributing it. A prototype observation may test usability; a waitlist tests interest. Neither proves reliability or purchase intent by itself.
6. Ask Specky to draft a PRD from the evidence. Have engineering review compatibility, measurable acceptance criteria, failure modes, and verification needs.
7. In Capacity planning, choose a unit and enter estimates for each item. For example, use person-weeks or prototype cycles. Changing the unit never converts story points into time or money. Save and reopen a named scenario.
8. Use Feature Marketing for the right stage: a prototype invitation, pilot brief, or launch draft. Review availability, performance claims, and any regulatory language before publication.

A real example

Illustrative example, not a customer result. An installer reports, “Pairing fails in the basement; we return with a laptop.” Add the note and its source. Ask: “Who is affected, what is still unknown, and what is the smallest useful test of offline commissioning?” A useful output separates the installer from the purchasing manager, proposes observing a prototype at a pilot site, and drafts acceptance criteria to review with engineering. You define the target completion time and supported conditions; Specky must not invent measured performance. If the prototype fails, record what happened and revise the requirement before committing tooling or production scope.

Your next move

Explore ICP & Positioning, Idea Validation, Capacity Planning, and Feature Marketing. See supported integrations. Specky is not a replacement for CAD, PLM, BOM, QMS, ERP, safety engineering, or formal compliance review.