When you study a product, it’s tempting to jump straight into the teardown.
But the first impressions are the ones we tend to skip almost always. For instance, how the box stands, once you open it how it feels and how you naturally react to it.
Industrial designers are trained to study these things for years. Self-taught builders often skip this step and miss the obvious cues that signal about everything inside. Most builders who come into hardware without that training - like me in 2022, founders, PMs, architects, software folks underestimate how much knowledge in this field is tacit. When you open a product, you’re looking at decisions about tooling costs, assembly order, etc. Without exposure to these, you don’t know what to look for, so you default to what’s obvious: aesthetics, clever features, or colour palettes.
This part of the series is about reading products from the outside in. Starting with form, surface, and interface.
1. Form
Form is the silhouette and stance. It tells you the product’s role in a space and how much attention it’s meant to draw.
The Xiaomi air purifier is a simple white block with perforations. Its proportions and neutral finish are designed to blend into a living room corner, almost disappearing into the background.
The Dyson air purifier tower is the opposite. Metallic, tall, and almost like a sculpture. The hollow ring at the top acts as both a vent and a visual anchor. It wants to stand out as a statement piece.
IKEA's LACK table has boxy proportions and is straight. It's engineered to ship flat and be assembled with minimal parts. Its form is less about taste and more about logistics.
The Apple HomePod is squat, rounded, and wrapped in fabric to soften its appearance. It lowers the centre of gravity, making it stable while also blending into home or office furniture.
A generic portable speaker often has angular, elongated forms to emphasise a portable gadget. It's designed to advertise itself as tech.
When you sketch silhouettes from three angles (front, side, top), you start to see whether an object is meant to disappear, announce itself, or balance somewhere in between.
2. Surface
Surface treatment is the most immediate clue to materials and manufacturing methods. It shows you what trade-offs were made between cost, durability, and feel.
The matte ABS tray on the Native M1/M2 purifier hides scratches and water stains, giving a premium, understated look. Matte also diffuses light, which is why it feels more solid.
Glossy polycarbonate bottles or gadgets look sleek when new but scratch easily and show fingerprints. They’re often chosen for low-cost appeal, not long-term durability.
Brushed Aluminium on Apple Macbooks are CNC-milled and anodised, the brushed finish gives a uniform grain that hides micro-scratches while adding tactile grip. This is typically to showcase precision and longevity.
IKEA frequently uses powder coating instead of anodising. It’s cheaper and provides durable protection, though the grain is coarser. For a low-cost lamp, this is the right balance of durability and cost.
Soft-touch grips on Logitech MX Master are done through rubber over-mould. It makes the mouse to feel comfortable in hand. The trade-off is longevity: soft-touch coatings tend to wear down, peel, or get sticky with sweaty palms or long use.
Surfaces are not just visual. Touch surfaces, guess the process (paint, anodise, mould colour, coating), and then verify later in a teardown. This builds intuition about process vs finish.
3. Interface
Interfaces are how products and human communicate.
Native M1 RO water purifier has a manual tap that anyone can understand instantly. It’s mechanical and universal.
Native M2 RO water purifier replaced this with touch presets for glass, bottle, or continuous flow. It's sleeker, but less intuitive for first-time users. The difference reflects different priorities to make the other one feel more premium, sophisticated.
Marshall speakers have oversized knobs are tactile and brand-specific. Marshall could have used simple buttons, but the knobs reinforce its identity as a music amplifier brand. The interface itself becomes brand communication.
Every interface signals brand values. Look for the product prioritising clarity with mechanical switches, delightful moments with hidden gestures, magnets, or assurance and reliability with something like a tactile switch.
Things to do
Pick one everyday product (fan, mouse, lamp, purifier, kettle).
Photograph it systematically: front, side, top, back, one close-up of the main interaction, and one angled photo for silhouette.
Sketch the silhouette: spend 5 minutes drawing the outline only from front, side, and top views. You don't need to be accurate. You're training your eye.
Study the surface: write down what it feels like (smooth, grainy, soft, cold), guess the finish or material, and ask yourself if it will look better or worse after two years of use.
Map every interface: list all touch points (buttons, sliders, hinges, grips), describe the feedback (clicky, soft, stiff, smooth), and label each as clear, confusing, or delightful.
Summarise in a teardown log: include silhouettes, five surface notes, all interaction points. What would you keep or change if you redesigned it?
Repeat weekly: aim for 10 products in 10 weeks. By week 5, you’ll notice patterns repeating across categories (e.g., premium products hide fasteners, budget ones don’t).