Time to read: 7 min
我们正在寻求最好的硬件公司和工程师，帮助揭示硬件产品开发背后的许多挑战，课程和哲学。
In this硬件聚光灯，我们有机会坐在Soundfocus的联合创始人中坐下来。亚历克斯和他的联合创始人Varun Srinivasan成立了公司的目标，以建立革命音频加工技术，以使数百万人在日常生活中听到更好。我们聊在亚历克斯关于灵感，用户测试和设计迭代时的重要课程。
告诉我你的故事以及它如何导致您创造SoundFocus。
I grew up with hearing loss – I have hearing aids in both ears. I’ve struggled to hear the world my entire life so I guess I pay attention to what I hear more than most. When I was studying mechanical engineering and product design at Stanford I had the opportunity to really understand everything about my ears as well as the great audio systems and how to build them.
What problem were you aiming to solve withSoundFocus?
Audio is a critical element of a great immersive experience with phone calls, music, and movies. Today, audio is a second class citizen on mobile phones today. Our product, Amp, fixes that. We give you great audio no matter where you are or what you are doing. This is done through a combination of great speakers and smart audio processing. To get the sound just right, we tune to your audio to your hearing, tastes, and the environment around you. So the obvious missing element on mobile devices today is sound. The sound is subpar and it’s always shooting out the wrong direction so you’re cupping your hand around the back of it hoping you get the sound to come towards you. With our product we offer personalized sound that analyzes your hearing needs, as in which frequencies of sound you hear well and which ones you don’t, your hearing tastes, and the effects of the environment around you.
“0.8毫米制造或打破产品。”
Tell me about your prototyping philosophy – what does your process look like?
The prototyping process is really something they drill into you at Stanford. In the engineering building they had a sign on the first floor that read, ETC – express, test, cycle. This means that you give just enough form to an idea that allows you to gather useful feedback, then you test it out and gather that feedback and repeat the process over and over. It was the one thing they wanted all engineers to know because without continuous learning and testing, the products you design will fail to hit their mark and truly solve a customer’s problems.
这哲学在您的产品开发过程中如何形成哲学？
Throughout our process we weren’t afraid of really low fidelity prototypes. Sometimes that actually helps customers imagine what it could be rather than what it is. In the beginning you don’t really want to have too much detail – you just want to get early feedback on the core concept, asking questions like, “if you had a rectangular box on your headphone cable, would you buy it?”
So before we had people test out a fully functioning product, we took 3D printed prototypes, just solid chunks of plastic with no electronics, and handed them to people in a nearby park and asked them really basic questions like, “does this feel good and does this fit in your pocket?” It’s surprising how big a difference even a few millimeters can make in terms of reactions to the physical form of a product. Like, .8mm is a giant GIANT amount of size. I kid you not, .8mm makes or breaks products.
What was the impact of 3D printing in your overall process?
Little things you would never know about just from a rendering will materialize into very big things. Like buttons, for example. You see it in CAD and you’re like, “oh, it looks big, but it’s not THAT big.” And then you print it out and you’re like, “that looks like a button monstrosity, a button designed for a pre-schooler so they would never miss it.” Those are the sorts of things you don’t see until it’s physically in 3D.
More specifically though, Fictiv came in and really changed the dynamics of our product development process. When we started developing our first headphone adaptor prototype we were using other vendors who were about 3 times as expensive per prototype and who we couldn’t rely on because their turn around times were inconsistent. With Fictiv, I can actually do more rigorous planning than before since delivery is so consistent and I have a prototyping partner whose advice I actually trust and can rely on. Having a good relationship with your prototyping partners is the only way you’ll survive and Fictiv is like an extended part of our team.
让我们深入了解您的产品开发的细节 - 您的第一个工作原型是什么样的？
我们所做的第一件事就是通过我们在iPhone / PC上运行的软件，并将其移植到比猎犬上。所以基本上我们有这个Tupperware盒子，上面有一个大声福音标志，它就像由USB电话充电器提供动力的耳机适配器的巨型版本。这根本不是关于硬件设计，而是将碎片放在一起，就像Macgyver一样。我们将一个盒子在一起，以满足基本的肠道检查;为了证明我们可以成功转移我们在我们的手机上实现一件硬件的处理。
“Fictiv came in and really changed the dynamics of our product development process…I have a prototyping partner whose advice I actually trust and can rely on.”
您的第一个使用工作原型的用户测试体验呢？
我们降落在正确的形式因素后product using the basic 3D prints, we decided to make 40 beta units of the headphone adaptor and actually sell them. Eric, the CEO of Pebble, gave us the advice that every customer who interacts with a beta needs to treat the product like it’s the real thing or else they will promise to use it and then it will sit on a shelf for three weeks. So we sold each unit for $100 each and put in extra effort with the packaging and presentation using soft tooling with really nice finishing and these nice little boxes with well designed instruction pamphlets to make people believe the beta units were like a finished product.
What kind of information did you garner from this testing?
The reactions were great and people really treated it like a real product, giving us extensive and high quality feedback. We learned that people really loved it but complained about having to remember to charge the thing. And if your most enthusiastic customers – your 10 out of 10 net promoters – are complaining about a particular issue you have to listen closely. So that was when we realized we could move toward building a smartphone case rather than the headphone adaptor. With our new product called Amp, which is now available for pre-order on our site, you don’t need any other devices. You get the benefit of having two high quality speakers with you all the time. You have incredible hands free calls, great sound from all your apps, and your headphones sound like they’ve been remastered. That with the added bonus that you don’t have to worry about charging, when you charge your Amp, you charge your phone.
“如果你过度管理混乱，你就不会足够快地移动。另一方面，如果你在管理混乱时，那么没有任何反应。“
What is it like to develop a product dependent upon an OEM like Apple?
这绝对是神经的骚扰。我不知道你是否曾经和那些建立电话案例的人谈过，但字面意思是他们在第一部手机中他们可以到达iPhone商店，他们在大约一个小时内飞到中国。因为每天都在市场上没有最新版本的产品，这是一天，您将从该系列案件中失去潜在的利润。但另一方面，每个新设备都是我们建立更好产品的机会。
您在旅程开始时给其他硬件初创公司提供什么建议？
First I’d say that high quality prototyping like 3D printing is awesome, but even before you do that, you should go quicker and dirtier – fold up some paper like origami style and do a gut check. Because that gut check takes you 5 minutes and zero money. Some companies burn big holes in their pockets spending thousands of dollars on prototypes when they could have learned a lot in 5 minutes from a couple pieces of foam board duct taped together.
另一个建议我给出的是，作为一个创业，混乱很难管理。但如果你过度管理混乱，你就不会快速移动。另一方面，如果你在管理混乱之下，那么没有任何反应。找到余额。
