Does one size fit all...How to develop a wearable

19 May 2016 S3908-P-835 v0.1
Commercially Confidential
Does one size fit all?
…How to develop a wearable?
Ruth Thomson
As presented at WEAR Boston – 25th May 2016

19 May 2016 S3908-P-835 v0.12Commercially Confidential
 Introduction
 Technology options
 Stakeholder requirements
 Designing a successful solution
 A sketchpad for engineers

Who we are
 Over 500 engineers, designers, scientists, and consultants.
 Delivering innovative product development for our clients across many market
sectors including medical, sports & fitness, enterprise, and consumer healthcare.
 We work with our clients at all stages from concept generation, through prototyping
to transfer to manufacture & implementation of systems.

Sports performance and technique monitoring…
THEN… NOW…
Available technology components
Uptake of smart phones
Use of cloud storage
…

Technology – what are the options?
Wearable device(s)
Wearable
It is easy to focus on the
device, but it’s important
to remember that there
are multiple parts of the
system…

Wearable device(s)
Wearable
sensors
UI
processing
comms
processing
processing
UI
service provisioning
service provisioning
sensors
UI
processing
comms
Technology decisions are required for all parts of the system (and don’t forget the
interfaces!)

Wearable device(s)
Wearable
accelerometer
gyroscope
ECG
optical (PPG)
GPS
EEG
altimeter
pressure
GSR
lactate
camera
GPS
accelerometer
camera
algorithms
processor
power
security
antenna
Bluetooth classic
BLE
WiFi
GSM
NFC
4G
WiFi
algorithms
processor
power
security
LEDs
haptics
display
auditory
display
haptics
auditory
magnetometer

Could you use all the
technology options for
every application?
Well….at best…you may
end up looking like this…

Does one size fit all?!
Clearly…NO!
…or more likely you’ll end
up looking like this…

 Introduction

In order to develop a
targeted solution think
about the requirements of
the stakeholders and how
much these can vary…

Angle of movement
What are the requirements? What is actually needed?
Technique
Heart rate
Waterproof
Weight
Different sports have different requirements…

Accuracy
Cost
Ease of use
Set up time
Data security
…
Different levels of athlete from mass consumer
to elite have different requirements…

coach
sports
scientist
media
fans
time?
It’s easy to focus on the athlete themselves, but think about possible
other stakeholders who may be interested in the info from the wearable…
Think about the context of TIME…the type of information the coach wants to
know mid game is different to the info they want to know in a post game debrief

 Introduction

What’s your minimum viable product?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be ambitious, but you should think through what
would be the MVP that would be successful for you. This will allow you to
focus on delivering rather than being distracted by ‘nice to have’ features
which could increase the scope and delay your development.
Designing a successful solution

Changes to one element of the system often affect others.
Understanding this and managing the system architecture are critical.
Designing a successful solution: it’s a system

Designing a successful solution: it’s a system
Demanding applications can result in conflicting design requirements.

Imagine…
…you have an idea for a connected product/service…
…you know you need a device, but you don’t know if what
you want is possible in a size/cost/power that will fulfil your
target value proposition…
…you want to get a better of understanding of what is
possible before you invest lots of time and money in
development…

Imagine…
I can envisage an elegant
wearable design….but will
it all fit? How big will the
device be?
…I want the battery to
last 2 wks min….is
that possible?
…what will it cost?...
…can the
measurements be
‘good enough’?

To deliver your connected product/service there are
lots of things that you need to consider…

In this talk we are focusing on the technology

TRADE-OFFS – Understanding what is important

It’s important to consider the trade-offs and think
through what is important for your idea so you
can balance the requirements for your target
application

Consider an implantable medical device…
…clearly for this application optimising the
battery performance is much more
important than the cost of the device…

…whereas for a high volume consumer
fitness wearable device optimising the cost
and the size will likely be the most
important factors

…think about what is important for your
idea and focus the development effort
where you are going to get the best
commercial return…
…and be aware of the point of diminishing
returns. Know how to recognise what is
‘good enough’ performance to meet your
value proposition..

So, imagine you have an idea for a connected device /
system…
…how can we quickly explore what could be possible before
you commit significant time/budget to development?
We can do this using fast simulation tools that we have
developed at Cambridge Consultants building on our
experience of developing multiple different connected
devices / systems over many years
To illustrate this we will use a simple example of a
wearable…

I want a connected product that…

If I take my idea and work with an industrial designer this is
a really useful process…
…the idea comes out of my head and becomes alive…
…this enables feedback and discussion so I can quickly
iterate and evolve my thoughts on what I want to achieve…

How do we make a better sketch pad for everything
else?

We wanted to create a sketch pad for engineers so we can
quickly iterate and evolve an idea, and make the trade-offs
visible and easy to understand to inform decision making.
So we invested in in-house simulation tools to make this
possible!
What’s the first step?
Working with engineers I can quickly understand what are
the key components I need within my design…

What do I need inside my connected product?

How big will it be?
2 cm
Using our in-house simulation tools we
can instantly generate an approx image of
the possible PCB area to get a sense for
the potential size of the device
This is the size you will get if you just use
the standard available parts
You may be relieved…
or you may think this is
far too big for your target
application and want to
understand how we can
reduce the size…
You can see that the
large brown area is the
dominant factor effecting
the size. This is the
ground plane for the
antenna….

How can I make it smaller?
2 cm
…we know that if we invest more
effort in the development we can
reduce the size of the ground
plane.
Here we’ve shown the possible
reduced size using the in-house
simulation tools.
Clearly this design will take more
time and money in development
but you can now visualise the
difference this will make to the size
and be able to make an informed
decision on what makes sense for
your business.

So how long will it last?
LED
Processing of
sensor data:
The algorithm
We can use our in-house
simulation tools to quickly
generate a breakdown of the
energy expenditure
This allows us to see what is
having the biggest impact on the
battery life.
For your target application you
may want a longer lifetime than 5
days and so you we can explore
how we could improve this by
using the simulation tool

That’s not great – make it better
By using a button instead of the LED
you can improve the battery life.
Clearly this will also impact the user
experience but you now have the
information to understand the trade
off.
You could also invest in more
development effort to improve the
algorithm to make it more efficient.
…we’re making the trade-offs visible
to allow you to make informed
decisions

If you are creating a ‘sensing’ device you will also
want to understand what is it possible to measure
and at what accuracy
Rather than invest in custom hardware for each
project we have created ‘sensor pucks’ which enable
us to quickly experiment…

Next…..Experiment and Play!
+
Hardware data collection
platform
a.k.a. a super duper sensor
puck
Truth data
a.k.a. capture the full picture of
what is actually happening with
human interpretation

+
Apply smart mathematicians and analysis

+

We’ve created a video that tells
you more about this approach
which you can view here

 Introduction
 Thank you! Any questions?

More about the presenter…
Ruth Thomson leads the Consumer business at Cambridge
Consultants. She has more than 14 years’ experience of
working with consumer brands, using technology to deliver
innovative consumer experiences across a range of
products and services. In the wearables space she is
working across sports and fitness technology, consumer
healthcare and personal care applications bringing
Cambridge Consultants' significant skills and experience in
the development of novel connected systems to these
opportunities for innovation.
More info at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruththomson
Contact Ruth at ruth.thomson@cambridgeconsultants.com

19 May 2016 S3908-P-835 v0.1
Cambridge UK
Registered No. 1036296 England
Cambridge Consultants is part of the Altran group, a global leader
in Innovation. www.Altran.com
www.CambridgeConsultants.com
The contents of this presentation are commercially confidential and the
proprietary information of Cambridge Consultants © 2016 Cambridge
Consultants Ltd. All rights reserved.
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