Platform Innovation Addressing Anthropomorphic Diversity and Active Lifestyles

Armband for Mobile Personal Devices: A wearable accessory which utilized Insight Development and Universal Design to create a true, one-size-fits-all product solution.

CLIENT Belkin International, Inc.

CHALLENGES

Develop an original, in-house design for entry into key, competitive product category.

OUTCOMES

Innovative solution addressing customer needs. Improved brand equity and protected key accounts. A proprietary design platform for future armband designs which has been adapted for generations of devices. Still a standard of armband design as evidenced by numerous imitations.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead designer and developer

• Nurtured innovation through different generations of platform designs
• Gathered and analyzed consumer feedback for insight development and strategic product criteria
• Researched and assessed anthropometric data for reference
• Interaction design development for fitting and performance

• DFM, rapid prototyping, and generative design to work through design challenges

• Onsite collaboration with vendors to develop golden samples

• LCM: Post-Launch quality control and rolling changes

INTRODUCTION

The Apple accessories market was a booming financial industry which supplied a sea of products to choose from. Per sell through data, the single largest iPod case category was by far the armband product. iPods, after all, were widely being used during exercise and/or outdoor activities. Having relied solely on OEM armbands to that point, the business unit requested a unique, Belkin-owned line of armbands for its product portfolio.

RESEARCH & DESIGN STRATEGY

Understanding armband users was an important step to discovering and emphatically understanding their needs and painpoints. Secondary research via online customer reviews revealed several insights including an overwhelming number of comments addressing the topic of how well the armbands either fit or didn't fit on their arms. One one side of the spectrum, large bodybuilders complained the armband was not long enough to fit around their bulging arms. On the other side, petite female users complained the armband was too long to fit around their thin, slight arms. The anthropometric disparity between arm sizes meant armbands were addressing the majority of users but not the full spectrum. This signature insight was one of the key criteria which drove design development.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT & EXPERIENCE DESIGN

For softgood products, design development has a steep learning curve due the industry's specific manufacturing process. Individually operated, industrial sewing machines were the main tools to mass produce soft good products. Sewing technology has remained flat and relatively the same since mid-20th century and requires high volume of skilled, manual laborers to hand-make and assemble each product as opposed to hardgoods products using injection molding machines. As a result, mechanical engineering is heavily relied on for the softgoods industry and instead requires designers themselves to work closely in-field with each manufacturers' sample team. A designer's responsibility was complete only after a "golden sample" was approved for mass production.

For Apple accessories, speed and time to market is competitively essential. Accessory makers each competed for limited retail space so that their products can be on the market first for consumers to begin accessorizing their Apple products. Design development therefore utilized different methods than hard good to accelerate the process. Quick, generative design with low fidelity paper prototyping was often used to verify if a design was feasible for softgoods manufacturing. Once designs were mature enough, technical specification kits were created and sent off for the sample team to develop first round samples. The next step was to arrive at the manufacturer to review samples and provide feedback to improve the designs in an iterative manner. Being onsite was also an opportunity to source for materials and fabrics, meet with new vendors to assess capabilities, and provide quality control for products already being manufactured. Once golden samples were achieved, a quality control specialist arrived to oversee manufacturing and then overseas shipping.

PLATFORM INNOVATION & LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT

The final design for production incorporated a removable armband extension to help address the distance between large arms and thin arms. It allowed Belkin to have an custom, innovative solution to help differentiate from competitors and a talking point with channel partners. But this design did not represent the final effort to armband development at Belkin. It was actually just the beginning of using platform innovation for life cycle management to continuously adapt and stay competitive within the category.

As new manufacturers and technology surfaced, different capabilities allowed the armband design to become better suited for athletic users. The separate armband extension was replaced by two separate slots in the for users to loop through; thereby reducing cost from an extension component which might not be used at all. A manufacturing technique to better weld fabric together allowed a majority of product components to be efficiently assembled in one step which improved production quality and enabled drastic labor and cost reduction. Access to high performance materials and fabrics delivered sophisticated advances which furthered Belkin armband abilities to meet the needs of people's device access during exercise activities.