The process of product development begins with product conception. Ideas for products can come from a number of sources - the sales units, who have the most direct link to the customers who buy our products, or from Creative's marketing departments, who may have come up with new product concepts through marketing studies or internal discussions. But as often as not, much of our product conception happens right here at ATC, within the various groups who have in-depth understanding of what is possible with our latest technology, as well as a good sense for what make a great product. ATC is also able to run on-line user surveys through Creative's various websites (creative.com, nomadworld.com, etc), and run focus groups to explore user habits, preferences, and desires.

As an example, the concepts for the Creative Nomad Jukebox originated at ATC, when a group of engineers advocated the idea of using a hard-disk as a high-capacity storage device for an MP3 player - extending the capacity of players from under an hour to well over 100 hours of music - enough for most users' entire music collections.

The product concept is first written up as a Marketing Requirements Document (MRD), which gives general requirements for what the product should do. ATC is a strong advocate for what we call "User-Centric Design". A product should be designed around the user, and a set of usage scenarios. How will this product or feature actually be used in real life? In which situations will it be used? What are the most compelling features? What are the most frustrating features, and how can they be made more usable?

The next step after the MRD is a more in-depth product specification, which describes the detailed operation and functionality, the user-interface, and so on. Once a detailed description of the requirements for the product is laid out, we then face a number of make-vs-buy decisions. Generally our products are a complex mix of hardware and software or firmware, whether they be sound cards like SB-Live! or Audigy, or Personal Digital Entertainment (PDE) devices like Jukebox. In either case we have to decide whether we are going to use off-the-shelf components (chips, etc) or licensed software from third-party developers, or develop the technology ourselves.

ATC is fortunate in that we have in-house silicon design teams experienced in audio DSP and System on Chip design, and if appropriate, we will design our own custom silicon for a particular product or product line. We also have very strong software and firmware engineers, as well as an advanced audio research group, that can put together just about any software or firmware that we need for a product. However, sometimes it makes sense for time-to-market or other considerations, to use third-party software in support of particular functionality, rather than develop it ourselves. We may also decide to use an off-the-shelf VLSI component rather than design it ourselves, for similar reasons.

Generally a product is prototyped at least once before going to the final design. A quick prototype allows us to test certain assumptions about usability, lets us demonstrate a product concept and get real-life user feedback that helps us refine our ideas for the final product, allows us to develop a number of alternative user-interface concepts, and so on. A working hardware prototype is also especially useful as a firmware development platform for certain hardware products, since the firmware can be tested in real-time on a platform that is close to the final product.

Industrial Design (ID) of our hardware products is a particularly interesting field. This determines how the final product will look, the shape of the device, plastics used, the color, what the buttons will look like, and so on. We often use outside design firms to help us with this, but we also provide a great deal of guidance and input, and control to a large extent how the product will look - again, the Jukebox MP3 player is a good example.

Once the final product is ready, pilot runs are made for testing, before the product is released to production, which typically is done offshore in Singapore or Malaysia. As you can see, ATC is closely involved at all stages of product development, from conception, all the way through to production. This global perspective of product development, in which we are involved at all points in the development cycle, makes the ATC Product Development Group an exciting place to be.