Meet Design 1st - Pioneers in Product Development

Design 1st, based in Ottawa, Canada, is a leading product design firm specializing in turning ideas into market-ready solutions. With expertise in hardware design, engineering, and prototyping, they serve industries from medical devices to consumer electronics.

Design 1st’s Rapid Prototyping Challenge

Design 1st faces intense time-pressure to deliver cutting-edge solutions in a competitive environment. Their clients demand rapid, iterative designs to validate complex electronics systems while keeping costs low and ensuring flexibility for bench testing and future iterations.

As a result, Design 1st is constantly looking for ways to optimize the design process – particularly in the areas of component research, schematic generation, and risk reduction – to deliver electronics designs faster, at a lower cost, and with fewer design-related errors.

Traditional design methods could take weeks to research components and then generate and validate designs, risking deadline misses.

Our clients demand fast-paced innovation, with zero margin for error. We envisioned harnessing AI and automation as a way to enhance our leadership in product design. Circuit Mind is helping turn that vision into a reality.

— Donovan Wallace, VP Electronics, Design 1st

Design 1st partnered with Circuit Mind to bring their Rapid Prototyping vision to life

Tackling a Healthcare Precision Wellness Project

When a customer seeking to deliver a cutting-edge healthcare product reached out, Design 1st seized the opportunity. The customer required a design for a device integrating patient interface, low-power EInk display support, and efficient Li-Ion power management.

Facing a tight timeline, Design 1st turned to Circuit Mind’s ACE platform to automate the early design phase of their electronics design workflow.

Critical Time Saved

For the healthcare precision wellness project Design 1st budgeted 12 days for the conceptual design phase, intended to confirm the product feasibility and allow the project to progress to the next phase of development. The conceptual design – including block diagram, preliminary schematics, and Bill of Materials – was completed in just 2 days with Circuit Mind’s ACE platform.

ACE enabled Design 1st to move from requirements to conceptual design architecture in minutes, for the power and digital portions of the circuit design, automatically generating an optimized BoM, procurement analysis, and design verification. Each auto-generated design also included a preliminary schematic ready for review and incorporation into a bench model – exported to Altium.

The Circuit Mind platform was a game-changer for our wellness project. We were able to cut the conceptual design phase from nearly two weeks to just a couple of days.

— Steve Auger, Electronics Design and Engineering Expert, Design 1st

Time savings wasn’t the only benefit – automation made it possible for Design 1st to explore multiple design candidates, allowing Design 1st to present a conceptual design to the client which satisfies the client’s requirements. In minutes, ACE generated multiple designs, from trillions of BoM options thoroughly explored, resulting in BoM cost reductions from 32 to 43% compared to the initial design.

The Process

The project launched on February 19, 2025, with requirement capture. The design was completed by February 21, with a functional design used as the basis for bench model testing. Here’s how Circuit Mind transformed Design 1st’s healthcare project:

Requirements Definition

Requirements were modeled as a block diagram in ACE, capturing needs for each functional block – e.g., the microcontroller, boost converter, EInk LCD, and patient interface. Flexible inputs allowed alternative components to meet Li-Ion battery constraints.

Automated Schematic and BoM Generation

ACE generated functional schematics and BOMs in minutes, compared to days for manual design, and adapted to Design 1st’s needs for the conceptual design phase of the project.

Procurement Analysis Generation and Optimization

ACE ensured the selection of components that were available in stock, in the required quantity, and low cost from Design 1st’s trusted distributors.

Verification Checks

Although ACE’s design algorithms ensure a mathematically correct design, ACE also ran a series of automated checks – interface pull-up checks, voltage margin checks, I2C address checks, derating checks, and more – as redundancy checks, looking for the most common errors that are made by design engineers. These reports were delivered to Design 1st electronics engineers for their inspection and review.

Design for Derating

ACE generated a design derating capacitors by 30% as specified by the user, derating temperature, resistor power dissipation and more. A derating report was auto-generated for derating verification by Design 1st’s Electronics Engineers.

Interface Communication Document

ACE generated an Interface communication document (ICD) to enable hardware-firmware co-design. The ICD contained all interfaces from the microcontroller, the pins selected for those interfaces, the peripherals connected on those interfaces as well as addresses for peripherals on the same BUS. ACE ensured that there were no address clashes for peripherals on the same bus. This enabled Steve to have documentation and a reference to write the firmware without having to trace signals on the schematic.

About Design 1st

Design 1st provides product design services for clients in need of engineering services, from concept through to manufacturing support. Expertise includes industrial design, mechanical, electrical/electronics, and software design for a broad spectrum of industries including medical, telecom, aerospace, industrial, and consumer products.
Learn more at design1st.com

About Circuit Mind

For rapid prototyping and product development, Circuit Mind’s AI-powered design automation delivers unmatched speed and precision. From slashing development cycles to optimizing costs and integrating with EDA tools, Circuit Mind empowers teams to validate concepts in days.
Book a meeting with us to see how Circuit Mind works for your team!

‍