37 Prototypes
Versions #3, #9, #19, and maybe like... #35?
I've made (at least) 37 different versions of the Fly Box over the last two months. The resulting product is truly the nicest thing I've ever made, but the process of getting there... let's say that has some room for improvement.
The Fly Box idea started in early April, when I called my brother to talk through the concept. Fly boxes aren't new, and neither are wooden versions. But I wanted to make one that met my standards for craftsmanship, and also had some unique features that would make it more functional for real use on the water.
On our phone call we sketched out the basic concept - a one-handed, swing-open box that combined both foam rubber fly storage as well as loose fly-tin-style storage.
That took about 15 minutes. It took me nearly two months of prototyping to get it right.
My original "design sketch" against version #33
Partly, that's because this design has tight tolerances, down to the thousands of an inch. Partly it's because this design uses no hinges or other mechanical parts. Partly it's because I kept adding features and refining things, including:
- shrinking the box from a bulky 6.5"x3"x1.25" down to a much more comfortable 6"x3"x1", while maintaining almost the same amount of interior storages space,
- adding additional magnets so that the lid locks in place when open, making the box look and feel much better when open,
- figuring out how to create removeable rubber inserts that are easy to remove but stay in place securely, all without using any hardware,
- adding lanyard attachment points to the corners that don't look like ugly holes, and
- doing each of these several different ways to make sure they looked and felt right
In addition, I had to learn how to use a CNC router, and how to do sophisticated two-sided carving, indexing each of the three parts perfectly so that the patterns would match up. I had to design the jig that would make that possible, before even really getting into the design of the product itself. After that, every part of the design had to be prototyped and tested, and I was simultaneously working on three different ideas - a single-chamber fly box, a dual-chamber box, and a smaller fly tin (which I had to give up on to get the other two finished on time).
But this wasn't really the issue. The real issue was that I got so excited about making these that I dove headlong into designing and prototyping, iterating willy-nilly as ideas struck me. After weeks of doing this, I had so many versions of this project floating around that I couldn't keep them straight, and I was mixing ideas from different versions without any sense of what I'd changed from pervious versions, and (more importantly) why I'd made those changes.
I'd made a mess, and I had to take a break and clean it up. So after a few weeks of designing, with 30 or so versions kicking around the shop, I spent a few hours cataloging them, writing down everything I changed from version to version, and started focusing on testing specific changes between the new versions. You can see my entire design log here, and you'll notice that the entries get much more detailed as we go on.
(You'll also notice that I fell back into my old habits and didn't note the changes made for the last few prototypes.... More discipline is required.)
33 of the 37 prototypes
Someone recently asked me what my design process is. I think that this is it. Get the basic idea, make it real as soon as you can. See what you like and don't like about. Try out a feature you don't think will work. Follow what excites you about the design. See if what excites you excites other people. Don't keep your excitement in check.
But do yourself a favor, and take better notes.
You can check out the Fly Box here.
