mising ideas for new products when they founded WhereTech, a start-up wearables technology company in the Omaha Foundry incubator. Most of their products were tech hipsterish, like a monocle with an...


mising ideas for new products when they founded WhereTech, a start-up wearables technology company in the Omaha Foundry incubator. Most of their products were tech hipsterish, like a monocle with an optical display or a satchel with a built-in WiFi hotspot. They pitched these ideas and several other products to investors in the Omaha area. There was some interest, but not enough to move forward. Surprisingly, though, their simplest product, the ZipFob, received immediate interest. Sarah came up with the product idea. She noticed that many people who bought Fitbits, Jawbones, and other fitness trackers really didn’t like wearing a bracelet on their wrist. Some people complained that these wearable trackers rubbed in strange ways or slipped off when they were sweaty. They didn’t like how the bracelets let sweat and gunk build up on the skin and often left a weird tan line. Some people complained that the bracelets got in the way of moving parts when they were using exercise equipment or lifting weights. Before long, customers told Sarah, the fitness trackers were just another item tossed into a junk drawer somewhere. Sarah realized that people wanted something to track their movement, but they really didn’t want the product to be around their wrist or arm, neck, leg, or any other body part. So, she came up with the ZipFob. Essentially, the ZipFob was a typical looking key fob, like the ones for car keys. But, like a Fitbit or Jawbone, it used a three-axis accelerometer to follow the motion of the user’s body. A built in GPS receiver would then calibrate how far a person moved throughout the day under his or her own power. The accelerometer could determine whether the user was walking, running, skateboarding, or riding a bike. If the user moved in another way, such as driving a car or riding a bus, the GPS would signal the accelerometer to stop counting temporarily. Based on Sarah’s concept, Deion created an app that would let users quickly download data from the ZipFob to their phone with the touch of a button. Then, the app would crunch the numbers and give the ZipFob user a daily score. The app could also set goals and offer a series of rewards for meeting personal and social goals. The nice thing about the ZipFob was that it could be taken anywhere. A Fitbit or Jawbone tended to look strange when worn with a nice outfit or a suit. The ZipFob could be slipped into a pocket or a purse. Deion and Sarah did some product testing and then pitched the ZipFob to several investors. There was immediate interest and offers to buy a stake in WhereTech. However, Jim Senti, one of their start-up mentors at the incubator pulled them aside and gave them some advice. “Listen,” he said, “before trying to get investors, you need to have the whole package completely ready to go, including the packaging and documentation.” He pointed out that the incubator had freelancers who could create a look for the packaging and write the documentation. Deion and Sarah agreed and hired a designer to develop the packaging and a technical writer to create the user manual. Everything was going well until they received the mockup for the ZipFob user manual (see Figure A). The text was fine, but the design was obviously not acceptable. Sarah said, “Helvetica?! They can’t be serious. And it looks like a big block of text.” Deion said, “I don’t see how it even fits in the packaging. Do we fold it?” If you were Deion and Sarah, what kinds of suggestions would you make to redesign the document? Using the material on the page shown in Figure A, how would you critique the design and tell the graphic designer what you wanted the revised version to look like? Use the five principles of design discussed in this chapter

May 04, 2022
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