Why do so many connected device projects—backed by deep engineering expertise—still fail to capture the market or run over budget?

The answer often lies in a critical disconnect: engineering builds to a technical spec, while the market demands a product solution.

This is the essence of a product-first approach—a strategic imperative for launching impactful, profitable connected devices. At Better Devices, we believe true innovation rises from understanding the market first, then building with precision. We partner with technical leaders to translate complex market insights into robust, user-centric, and successful embedded solutions.

The Disconnect: 4 Common Pitfalls of a Tech-First Strategy

Many embedded programs, especially in rapidly scaling domains like IoT and autonomous systems, face predictable pitfalls when engineering operates in a vacuum:

  • Feature Overload, Market Underwhelm: Building technically impressive features that don’t translate into real user value or competitive advantage. This leads to wasted resources and lukewarm adoption.
  • Late-Stage Surprises: Discovering critical market or usability issues deep into the development cycle. This results in costly reworks, missed deadlines, and significant budget overruns.
  • Scalability Roadblocks: Focusing solely on initial functionality without a clear plan for future growth. This leads to fragile architectures that can’t handle increased demand or new product iterations.
  • Documentation & Knowledge Gaps: Relying on informal knowledge transfer, which hinders parallel development, complicates troubleshooting, and creates critical dependencies on specific individuals.

These challenges highlight a fundamental misalignment. Your team is working to a spec, but your product needs a market solution.

The Solution: 4 Principles of a Product-First Embedded Strategy

Our approach is designed to bridge this gap, ensuring that every engineering effort contributes directly to market success.

1. Strategic Hardware & Component Selection

We begin with a deep analysis of your market requirements. We select components on industry-standard platforms, using our expertise in EDA tools like Altium, Fusion 360, and KiCad. This ensures designs are not only functional but also manufacturable and cost-effective for their target market.

2. State-of-the-Art Instrumentation & Analysis

To ensure products meet real-world performance expectations, we utilize a full suite of benchtop and field-portable measurement equipment. Our custom Python-based tooling for protocol and analog signal analysis leverages:

  • Oscilloscopes
  • Logic Analyzers
  • Spectrum Analyzers
  • Signal Generators
  • Software Defined Radios (SDRs)

This allows us to validate designs against actual market conditions and complex user scenarios.

3. Future-Proofed Architecture (OS & Protocols)

We architect systems optimized for power, performance, and future-proofing. Our proficiency across the entire embedded stack ensures we select the right tools for the job.

  • Embedded OS: Zephyr, FreeRTOS, Bare metal, Embedded Linux
  • Wired Protocols: I2C, SPI, UART, CAN, DPIM
  • Wireless Protocols: Bluetooth LE, WiFi, LoRa, LTE-M/NB-IoT
  • Modulated Protocols: OOK, FSK, ASK

This broad capability ensures the final product has the right connectivity and control for its specific market context, from low-power sensors to high-bandwidth video.

4. Executable Specifications & Agile Hardware

We champion creating executable specs that align hardware, firmware, and software teams from day one. This hardware agile approach, similar to our work in translating legacy RF protocols, drastically reduces rework. It makes final integration a simple confirmation, not a discovery of new problems.

Driving Market Success: Our Track Record

Our product-first approach has consistently delivered impactful results for clients across diverse, demanding domains:

Global Smart Home Security

Consumer Technology: We serve as a premier trusted partner for a global e-commerce and consumer technology leader with a flagship smart home security line. Our multi-year engagement spanned research, mass production, and B2C field engineering across multiple international markets, demonstrating our ability to align engineering with mass-scale consumer demand.

Driverless Mobility & Functional Safety

Driverless Mobility: We defined the Functional Safety Concept (ISO 26262) and performed systems engineering for a leading driverless mobility scale-up pioneering automotive technology. Our work helped deploy one of the world’s first driverless vehicles, a testament to delivering cutting-edge, mission-critical technology aligned with a transformative market vision.

Industrial IoT Asset Tracking

Industrial Asset Tracking: We developed an End-to-End Proof of Concept (PoC) for a high-growth Industrial IoT player in large-scale construction site asset tracking.

These successes underscore a fundamental truth: robust engineering, when guided by a clear product vision and market understanding, leads to extraordinary outcomes.

Aligning for a Market-Ready Product

For CTOs, VPs of Product, and Heads of Engineering, a product-first approach isn’t just a methodology; it’s a competitive advantage. It ensures your IoT product strategy is resilient, your embedded lifecycle management is efficient, and your innovations truly resonate with the market.

Are you ready to align your embedded engineering with market demands and achieve predictable, impactful product launches?

Get in touch with Better Devices today. Let’s build what the market truly needs, together.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1: What is a “product-first approach” in embedded engineering?

A product-first approach is a strategy where market demands and user needs are the primary drivers for all engineering decisions. Instead of building technology for its own sake, this method ensures that every feature, component choice, and architectural decision is directly tied to creating a successful, profitable, and user-centric product.

Q2: What are the biggest risks of not using this approach?

The most common risks, as outlined in the article, are:

  • Feature Overload: Wasting time and money on features users don’t need.
  • Late-Stage Surprises: Discovering major market or usability flaws late in development, leading to costly reworks and missed deadlines.
  • Scalability Issues: Building a product that can’t handle future growth or new iterations.
  • Knowledge Gaps: Poor documentation that slows down development and creates dependencies.

Q3: How does this approach help with budgets and timelines?

By aligning engineering with market needs from day one, a product-first approach drastically reduces wasted effort. It minimizes the risk of building the “wrong” product and eliminates costly late-stage reworks. Creating “executable specifications” and using an agile hardware approach means integration becomes a simple confirmation, not a period of discovering new problems, which keeps projects on time and on budget.

Q4: What kind of technologies and industries do you specialize in?

We have deep expertise across the entire embedded stack, including Embedded OS (Zephyr, FreeRTOS, Embedded Linux), a wide range of wireless and wired protocols (Bluetooth LE, WiFi, LoRa, CAN, etc.), and hardware design tools (Altium, KiCad). As our case studies show, we apply this expertise to demanding domains like smart home security, driverless mobility, and Industrial IoT.