GET CONNECTED - Cambridge Consultants€¦ · The top 10 issues guide to create a successful connected device. 1 ... from how well your software is written, to the radio antenna and

GET CONNECTEDThe ‘top 10 issues’ guide to create a successful connected device

Appcessory Toolkit_10steps_papers_12pp.indd 1 26/08/2014 10:16

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The ‘top 10 issues’ guide to create a successful connected device 1

So what does this mean for the plethora of businesses that have, up until now, never had to worry about connectivity issues or maybe even electronics and batteries? How do you successfully change your business model in order to offer a service as well as a product? How do you design the service such that it adds value to both you and your customer?

The trend of creating connected devices (or appcessories, as some are calling it) is affecting nearly every market you can think of. It can be seen everywhere – from a pharmaceutical company that wants a wireless inhaler to measure compliance, to a sporting goods manufacturer wanting to offer performance/technique tracking, or a lighting and heating controls company aiming to enable smart homes and offices.

This simple guide aims to help you through the 10 most important things you need to consider if you are to make a successful connected device that is capable of delighting your customer, engaging them with your brand through additional touch points and opening up new revenue streams for you.

Keys. Money. Phone. The three things that nearly everyone reaches for every time they go anywhere. Connecting and being connected is so every day that is has become expected. Ubiquitous. Even demanded?

TO CONNECT OR NOT CONNECT?


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1Always start by considering your ‘minimum viable product’

We don’t mean ‘set the bar low’! Rather, be clear on what you need to deliver to be successful. Put simply, a minimum viable product is a set of written down

statements or parameters that you are not prepared to give up on in order to create a successful product that your customers will actually want. If you’re creating a device that is going to be worn, what size or weight will people comfortably accept? How often will they need to charge it? What functionality must the device offer and how frequently do you need the device to communicate the information that it has learnt?

Many of these factors – from an engineering and product development perspective – are inter-dependent and must be traded off against each other in order to achieve a good balance. So it is important to define which characteristics you absolutely have to have and which you might be prepared to compromise on. In reality, the clearer you are on your requirements at this stage, the more efficient the design process will be – allowing you to remain in control of development costs as you turn your vision into a manufactured reality.

DEFINE WHICH CHARACTERISTICS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE AND WHICH YOU MIGHT BE PREPARED TO COMPROMISE ON

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32Electronics

The first thing a connected device needs is electronics to ‘drive’ it. A common approach here is to source your electronics from an original design manufacturer

(ODM). These companies will supply you with working components that are tried and tested and made in the thousands or millions. The advantage of working with an ODM to help create your product is the components are typically cheap, tested and quick to see rolling off your manufacturing line.

The downside with this approach, however, is you normally have to accept that those electronics will only do what the ODM has designed them to do. They come in a fixed shape and size, which can – if you are trying to create something unique – seriously limit the final form factor of your new connected device. If you go this route, consider how well your ODM partner and your industrial designers can work together. There’s no point designing something small and beautiful if you can’t produce working electronics that can fit inside.

The alternative option here is to have your electronics specifically designed for the job you want them to do. Pick a trusted development partner who has significant experience in this kind of work and can ‘bend’ the laws of physics to realise the ‘wow’ factor you’re looking for in your new product. Many claim they can ‘do’ this bit of the development process – but the reality is that it takes significant skills and experience to get it right.

Interaction and user experience

So what happens when your customer takes your device out of the box? How, for example, does it connect to the user’s phone? Does the device need

buttons? An LED to blink or communicate its state (asleep, battery level or mode)? Or does it need a display to communicate more complex information?

These decisions will affect the user’s experience of the device and consequently its success in the market place. They will also dramatically affect issues such as battery life and form factor.

Ideally, think about mapping out the desired user experience – from first use to everyday use to end of life – before embarking on the product design. Have in mind which aspects you are willing to compromise on without affecting user acceptance, in case it becomes necessary.

Aside from the app and potentially the web service, your customer will interact with your device through its exterior surfaces and controls, so these must convey your brand values, and the message you wish to deliver – be that quality, reliability, robustness, fun, discreetness or professionalism.

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DEFINE WHICH CHARACTERISTICS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE AND WHICH YOU MIGHT BE PREPARED TO COMPROMISE ON ”



54Power and batteries

A battery is a battery – right? It is, but it only contains a certain amount of energy from each charge so deciding how to use it is key. Will your customers be willing to

charge the device every day or do you need a single coin cell to last a month or two? Or longer? Your power ‘budget’ will be affected by a whole host of things, from how well your software is written, to the radio antenna and other chips you specify. Does your device need to communicate to your customer via a screen or will a blinking LED do the job? Simply changing the frequency of the ‘blink’ can double your battery life.

Optimising your device can take real effort. Knowing which optimisations give you the greatest benefit is valuable. This is where the system architect comes in – they will make sure your development budget is spent in the areas where it has the greatest effect.

Radios and antennas

Easy to overlook but much, much harder to get right if you want to push the performance of your device. Remember the Apple debacle when it launched the

iPhone 4 and the problems the phone had if you held it in a certain way?

Radios and antennas can be bought as standard products but each antenna is designed with what’s known as a ‘ground plane’ – a keep-out zone where you can’t put any other electronics if you expect the radio to work to the intended spec. Typically, with off-the-shelf antennas, a large ground plane is required to achieve the advertised ‘high performance’. That means that, once again, you might have to make a compromise between performance and the size of your device.

Whilst a specialist area, there are people (and yes, we have them!) who will design custom antennas that can increase the communication range and reliability of your device and help shrink its overall footprint. Of course, this is always going to be a more expensive and time-consuming route than buying standard components off the shelf – but it will result in a better product. The key is to decide the relative importance of size and performance, and what your customers will accept, early in the development process so the appropriate path can be followed.

Also remember that, as soon as you use a radio, you come under a whole set of legislation that requires you to operate – and prove that you are operating – to very specific standards. The time required to schedule and perform the compliance testing via a certified test house is often overlooked.



6 7Phones and apps

For many connected devices, your customer will mainly interact with them via their smartphone. It can carry out any intensive number crunching and provide

connectivity to the ‘cloud’ and your web services. But which platforms are you going to design to?

Most people will choose to work with Apple and/or Android-based phones. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and both require on-going work to keep your app working as the operating systems are upgraded and new devices are launched.

From an accessory perspective, Apple is the king of user experience and ecosystem. It encourages others to develop accessories that work with its devices, whilst working hard to ensure overall user experience of accessory and phone is maintained to a high level of quality.

Apple’s operating system, iOS, tends to be upgraded every few months, and sometimes these updates can be pretty significant. Changes to the look and feel are most obvious but there are more subtle changes which can have a big impact on your appcessory. For example, a minor tweak to reduce the Bluetooth current consumption on the phone can significantly reduce your appcessory’s battery life. Surely that will never happen? Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened when Apple did a minor software upgrade of iOS 6 resulting in a 35% decrease of battery lifetime for some applications – leaving several companies high and dry.

Google gives away Android to promote its services, and historically all other concerns have been secondary. This means that accessories haven’t really been thought about in the design of the operating system; neither has updating phones once they are out in the field. This leads to tension with manufacturers who want to differentiate their handsets and create accessories that work well with them but are hampered by their limited influence over Google’s often obscure roadmap for the operating system. This means that Android handsets are unlikely to get an upgrade once the model is no longer available in the shops and, since there isn’t a single entity managing the process, any official update issued may not make it all the way to the phones. Furthermore, there are a lot of models of Android phones on the market.

This problem of fragmentation leaves you needing to support different versions of the OS across the many popular devices that exist. Moreover, given the large variety of sizes and shapes of phones that support Android, the user interface design becomes more complex.

Algorithms

Algorithms, aka clever maths, may appear unfathomable but ignore at your peril! The right algorithm can make a world of difference between what

your product can and can’t do – and therefore what your customers think of it.

If you simply want your device to measure temperature, you can do it directly – there’s a simple sensor that does this and no analysis is required. However, if you want to measure how high you’ve jumped, then you’ll need to apply an algorithm to the data coming from your sensors to calculate the answer.

As well as enabling a whole new set of things to be measured and reported, by investing in the development of clever algorithms you can get away with cheaper sensors and components to achieve a similar or even better measurement. Also, smart implementation of algorithms can give you lots more battery life. As with many other factors in creating a connected device, you are once again looking at a trade-off when it comes to spending development money. If you are looking to develop a high-volume product, then investing in better algorithm development can truly save you money in the long run.

For medical devices, the algorithm is often the critical element that yields the diagnostic result or evidence required for demonstrating efficacy. For a consumer sports device, it will be important to make a judgement of when the algorithm provides ‘good enough’ results to provide the consumer benefit whilst balancing power requirements and component specifications. Whatever your market, a competent algorithm can be key to delighting your customers and differentiating your device from the sea of similar products.


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98Price and BOM

$Clearly, when working out how much you are going to charge for your device/service, you need to know much it’s going to cost to make it. This will be strongly

influenced by the bill of materials (BOM). Partitioning the overall cost of goods sold (COGS) into electronics BOM, materials, manufacturing, packaging and set-up costs becomes important.

With regard to the electronics BOM, having considered all the other points above, you should be able to create a shopping list of components that means you can get to a realistic price from a manufacturer. Swapping one component for another will allow you to haggle on price but bear in mind why you chose that component in the first place.

However, be careful about always going for the cheapest when buying what can appear to be standard electrical components or items. Charging devices that have caught fire have done little to enhance the brand reputation of the companies involved.

Also, consider the lifetime remaining for the components. You might be able to get a great deal on some parts but this may mean you also need to redesign your product when obsolescence hits.

The production quantities will have a large impact on the BOM and very high production quantities will give you increased negotiation power with potential manufacturing partners and component suppliers. Predicted production quantities should also strongly affect your decision on manufacturing partner and their location.

Manufacturing

You already have a manufacturing partner? Great. However, do they have the right skills and equipment for your type of connected device? Perhaps they are tied

into particular parts or vendors through existing deals, know-how or existing production line infrastructure. For example, suboptimal chips can simply burn through more power. In turn, this means your product has to be larger to cope with a bigger battery or your customer has to recharge their device more often. Probably not so good.

Selecting the right manufacturing partner is an important decision that you’ll need to live with for a long while. You’ll need to believe you can work with them commercially and believe they are technically capable of delivering for you… fortunately, there are folks who can help you with this selection (we have some of these people too!). You might think it’s easy to change manufacturing partner if they don’t come up to scratch – but be careful. We’ve seen way too many people caught out by some very subtle technical ‘lock-ins’. It goes a bit like this. You take a design you’ve created to your manufacturing partner, who in return offers you a cheaper price if you swap some of your design for some of their ‘preferred’ components. Great. But who now owns the design of your product? Possibly not you – and this can make it really quite challenging to move to someone else downstream. Be especially cautious if software is involved.

A few other thoughts on manufacturing – does your product need to be waterproof and can your partner manufacture to this level? If you are working hard to create the smallest possible product, question whether they can handle small components – many can’t. And, of course, if it is a medical device you are developing, the requirement for quality systems and ISO13485 certification may narrow your choices further.

Also, what about location? Manufacturing can be cheaper in some countries but the physical distance and language barriers may present their own problems when issues arise. You need to consider shipping costs to get the products to their target market. It is not always true that local manufacturing is more costly when looking at the overall costs, especially if your process can be fully automated and doesn’t need to be hand assembled.

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10And finally, before you start…

Think technology is moving fast? Well, so is the business model. Connected devices sit at the blurred boundary between products and services. Product

companies can struggle to get to grips with service-based business models and service companies can struggle to get to grips with making products. This means that – whether you need to get corporate buy-in or convince a VC to invest – you’ll probably need to answer twice as many questions and be prepared to do a little education along the way.

The route to revenue is perhaps the most important consideration of all the factors in this guide. In fact, this guide is designed to tell you how to go about getting the right numbers to plug into your business model.

Whether yours is an ambitious start-up or an established business offering a new connected device/system, the value proposition and source of revenue will have a great bearing on the device and application design. You need to determine whether you’ll make money from selling the device itself or if it is the app and data-backed service that will generate revenue. Will the user pay a subscription or is there a business-to-business deal based around the data you collect?

If the system has a consumable element, can you protect against copycats eroding your revenue stream? If you are subsidising your hardware, can you prevent people buying it without using your services?

The business model not only guides development budget, it also dictates operational and maintenance costs which can easily be overlooked.

PRODUCT. DATA. SERVICE. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SELL TO WHO?“

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We have developed a tried-and-tested approach based around a technology toolkit to help clients rapidly bring to life their ideas for an appcessory.

During an interactive workshop, we bring together key technical and business experts, working with our toolkit, to understand what you want the product to be. Throughout the day, and in real time, we develop a model that incorporates all your key requirements (whilst having asked the tough questions around minimum viable products and delivering estimates for product size, power requirements and connectivity performance instantly). Our toolkit shows the impact of different design decisions in order to help you and your team to rapidly understand the pinch points and the trade-offs that need to be made to get your product right. It can help you understand the technical risks so that you can focus investments in the right places and start the development with your eyes wide open!

You leave the day with a physical model of your required product as well as an understanding of its performance, and the best way to develop it.

Having reviewed the 10 issues in this guide, you have probably recognised the interdependence they have and their impact on your product. This is truly a balancing act… it is relatively easy to achieve great heights on one product aspect but achieving optimal performance at lowest cost AND smallest size – now, that is truly challenging. And that’s where we come in.

The CC Appcessory Toolkit

Our sector specialists

Our three commercial leads understand your market areas and will draw on the engineers and scientists from across the company to get you started with your connected system development.

Vaishali Kamat – head of digital health – focus on connected medical devices and ecosystems for healthcare, including drug delivery, diagnostics and surgical applications

Ruth Thomson – head of consumer product development – focus on sports and fitness, and beverage and personal care connected systems

Tim Ensor – head of connected devices – focus on smart buildings, retail and logistics, and industrial connected systems




Cambridge Consultants is part of the Altran group, a global leader in innovation. www.Altran.com

www.CambridgeConsultants.com

Cambridge UK • Boston USA • Singapore

About Cambridge ConsultantsCambridge Consultants has been developing breakthrough products and systems for over 50 years, giving our clients the competitive advantage they need in their markets.

With a team of more than 400 staff, including engineers, physicists, mathematicians and designers, in offices in Cambridge (UK), Boston (USA) and Singapore, Cambridge Consultants operates across a diverse range of industries including medical technology, industrial and consumer products, digital health, energy and wireless communications. We have all the skills in house to take you from defining your concept to watching your connected device roll off the end of the production line.

Client confidentiality prohibits us talking about the connected devices we have already created for world-leading companies across a range of markets. We created this guide because we are frequently asked the same kinds of questions by clients wanting to connect their existing products and launch into services– and by companies who need to find a way to significantly differentiate their products to survive in an increasingly competitive market.

Contact us at:

[email protected]

September 2014


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GET CONNECTED - Cambridge Consultants€¦ · The top 10 issues guide to create a successful connected device. 1 ... from how well your software is written, to the radio antenna and