How to develop a wearable

27 March 2015 S3908-P-651 v1.0
Commercially Confidential
Does one size fit all?
…How to develop a wearable?
Ruth Thomson
Wearables London – 26th March 2015
As presented at the Wearables London
Meetup Group
http://www.meetup.com/Wearables-
London/events/219037701/

27 March 2015 S3908-P-651 v1.02Commercially Confidential
 Introduction
 Technology options
 Stakeholder requirements
 Designing a successful solution
 A sketchpad for engineers
How to develop a wearable?

Who we are
 Over 450 engineers, designers, scientists, and consultants.
 Delivering innovative product development for our clients across many market
sectors including medical, sports & fitness, enterprise, and personal care.
 We work with our clients at all stages from concept generation, through prototyping
to transfer to manufacture & implementation of systems.
 Further details at http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/

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

Technology availability
 Components are now available at a cost, size and performance
that makes new products/systems possible…
 …new options are emerging all the time.

Uptake of smartphones reduces the cost of entry for new products/systems…
 The uptake of smartphones means that most
consumers already have part of the system
in their pocket
 Wearable tech systems can effectively ‘piggy
back’ on this existing infrastructure
– Cost benefits
– Data capture is effectively omnipresent

Let’s consider the
technology building
blocks required to deliver
these systems

Technology – what are the options?
Wearable device(s)
Wearable
It’s important to remember that there is much more to this than just the wearable
device; you need to consider the whole system

Wearable device(s)
Wearable
sensors
UI
processing
comms
processing
processing
UI
service provisioning
service provisioning
sensors
UI
processing
comms

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
…clearly there are lots of different options and many new ones emerging all the time…

…if you included all these technology components in a single solution you might end
up looking like this…

Does one size fit all?!
Clearly…NO!
…or worse…like this!…

 Introduction

Clearly one size doesn’t fit all,
and to develop a successful
solution it’s important to consider
the requirements of the
stakeholders who will use and
interact with your product/system

Angle of movement
What are the requirements? What is actually needed?
Technique
Heart rate
Waterproof
Weight
Think about the different requirements for different sports, and what
the athletes want to know…

Accuracy
Cost
Ease of use
Set up time
Data security
Think about the different requirements for athletes at different levels
in sport…from mass market consumers to elite athletes…

coach
sports
scientist
media
fans
Think about the different requirements for the different stakeholders
involved in a single sport.…it’s not just all about the athlete, you
also need to consider…

coach
sports
scientist
media
fans
…also think about the importance of the context of WHEN & HOW the information
will be consumed e.g. what the coach wants to know on the side of the pitch
during a game is different to the information he wants when reviewing the team
performance post-match, or when catching up 1:1 with a player to review
performance over an extended time

 Introduction

We’ve already talked about the
importance of understanding the
requirements of the stakeholders…
…when designing a successful
solution it is also important to
consider…

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

….also, remember that this is a SYSTEM!
You need to consider the system
architecture right from the beginning…

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.

Focus the development effort on the best commercial return
Differentiation
Development effort and risk
Good improvements
with increasing effort
Significant technical challenge

 Introduction

I’d like to introduce a toolkit that we have developed at CC that
enables us to explore and understand the options for a
connected device design.
In a day workshop with our clients we use the toolkit to very
quickly visualise the impact of decisions, and explore trade-offs
so that you can understand the realities of the design direction
before committing significant time & budget to development
It lets us explore possible size, cost, range, battery life…
It is a sketchpad for engineers!

I’m going to illustrate how you can use
the toolkit using a very simple
connected device concept…

I want a wearable connected product that…

If you go to an industrial designer
this is what you might get…

If you go to an industrial designer
this is what you might get…
If you spend some time with an industrial designer they will talk with you to understand
what it is you’re trying to create and pretty soon they’ll start drawing on a pad or the
whiteboard.
This is a really effective process – there’s communication in both directions. It’s easy to
see the sketches and understand what the product might look like.
The sketch provides a means of communicating that encourages exploration and
questioning. If there’s something you don’t like you can ask….what happens if I change
this….
So what happens when you need to design electronics, communications and advanced
maths…?

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

So whilst you were describing your concept,
and the industrial designer was sketching, the
engineer was thinking through the key
components for the design in their head.
That’s something that all engineers will do as
soon as you start describing a problem to
them, in fact it’s hard to get engineers not to
do that!
We can use the toolkit to bring this alive for
our clients…to make it visual…

First let’s consider….What do I need inside my connected product?
You’ll need…
 A sensor to detect the activity
 A radio to communicate with the rest of the world, and most radios these days
come with spare processing capability that can be used to give the device
some intelligence
 As the user will probably want some simple feedback like whether it’s on or
whether the battery is low we’ll add in an LED
 The radio is going to need an antenna to work well
 The algorithm will be the bit that uses the processing capability to convert the
sensor data into activity information that the user can understand
 And finally it will need to get power, so let’s add a battery

Choose
parts
Copy
reference
designs
Test
How big will it be?
2 cm
Within seconds the toolkit
will create an image to
show the size of the PCB
You can see that the size
is dominated by the
ground plane of the
antenna.
This is the ‘keep out’ zone
that allows the antenna to
function as intended
antenna
antenna ground plane

How can I make it smaller?
Choose
antenna
Reduce
ground
plane
Rapid
prototype
PCB
Test Iterate Finalise
2 cm
We can look at investing more effort in RF
engineering to create a more compact
antenna design. Before spending
development time & budget doing this, let’s
use the toolkit to visualise the impact this
could have…
…the toolkit includes a compact antenna
design, so, within seconds, we can see an
approximation of the impact and have an
informed decision about whether this is worth
the extra development cost or not.

We can do the same for
power…

So how long will it last?
LED
Processing of
sensor data:
The algorithm

That’s not great – how can
we improve the battery
life?
 Add a button
 Assume more software effort so
the algorithm requires less
processing resource

How much will it cost?
Conceptual BoM DetailedBoM
 Sensor
 Radio
 LED
 Antenna
 Algorithm
 Battery
The toolkit links to
on-line 3rd party
catalogues for low
volume
components
allowing us to
quickly see the
approx cost.
And after the
workshop we can
talk to
manufacturing
partners to
understand
potential costs in
high volume.

Use the sketchpad for engineers to explore and
understand the trade offs in the design
Pick your direction
GO! GO! GO!

This is our ‘sketchpad’ for engineers!
Similar to an industrial designers sketchpad it isn’t
intended to be highly accurate, but rather to enable
informed decisions and the evolution of the concept that
will come from being able to visualise the trade offs and
design options.
We use the toolkit in a workshop style project with our
clients to enable the right decisions to be made before
starting work on the development.

If you’d like to learn more then we’ve written a report
on the top 10 tips to creating a successful connected
device. You can download this here…
http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/media/press-
releases/demystifying-connected-world
Do get in-touch if you have a project where you’d like
to use the toolkit or if you’re looking for development
support for your innovative wearable product!

 Introduction
 Thank you! Any questions?

More about the presenter…
Ruth Thomson leads the Consumer business at Cambridge
Consultants. She has more than 12 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, wellness 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

27 March 2015 S3908-P-651 v1.0
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
© 2014 Cambridge Consultants Ltd. All rights reserved.
Boston USA Singapore

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