Perfect Counter Design: Part III

Guest blogger: Gray Holland from the design firm Alchemy Labs.

Making it Work - FOR REAL: [July 27th 2008]

After rebooting the counter’s functional design, and winning the Perfect teams support, we had to hustle to still make the Christmas release. The key to maintaining the timeline was incorporating this new soft base without loosing the existing development ground work. Through the guidance of Perfects president and co-founder Mark Friedman, we divided the development tasks: focusing the factory on the counter unit itself and Alchemy concentrating on the base. The base had a fair amount of surface complexity, which would be lost using solid modeling CAD software, thus we used our surfacing expertise within Alias Studio to execute a class “A” surfaced part for tooling release.

Packaging it All Up: [November 5th 2008]

After several tweaks to the tooling database to streamline the manufacturing process the final data was released in mid September. But there we still open issues for this project given its late development, namely that the packaging graphics for the Counter box were due, but there was no real Counters to take pictures of yet. So we used the production CAD data to render the final shots needed for the packaging, providing the last part of the development puzzle, and getting the Counter ready for its “just in time” launch for the 2008 Christmas season.

Perfect Counter Design: Part II

Guest blogger: Gray Holland from the design firm Alchemy Labs.

Making it Work: [June 27th 2008]

Next steps began with evolving the 3D CAD sketch into something that really worked. We started by building a visual prototype to test the idea. We rapidly moved forward on the refinement and prototyping simultaneously because the design direction was clear to everyone. 3D files and cut-a-ways views illustrated the build of materials [BOM] for the factory in order to get preliminary manufacturing feedback. We were very excited that things were going so smoothly, releasing our first prototype in record time; It looked like we would not have any problems hitting our Christmas launch date.

First Prototypes - The Reality Check: [July 1st 2008]

The first prototype looked great, exactly like the original vision of the concept. But after reviewing it with Alden and the Perfect team, I had an anxious feeling: Had we created a design that was flexible enough for the exercise itself? After doing further testing with the prototype, we came to the conclusion that we wanted more flexibility in the base of the Counter. We found the more the user became fatigued in their workout, the more difficult it was for them to repeat the same rep height every time. In fact, we concluded that we wanted up to 2 inches of travel for the Counter to better match the users needs. The donut shaped foam button only gave us about a half of an inch of travel, but we quickly saw this problem as an innovation opportunity.

Next we moved forward to test our flexibility idea with some quick mock-ups. With no time to model and cast up this new idea, we identified another product that was close in form and function—so raiding the nearest hardware store requisitioning a bunch of plungers to test our concept. By cutting them into different shapes and studying their resulting behaviors, we were able to develop the “perfect” shape: maintaining the original design statement while adding this new flexible base functionality.

Perfect Counter Design: Part I

Guest blogger: Gray Holland from the design firm Alchemy Labs.

Recently Alden asked me to chronicle our collective effort for the Perfect Counter design and development process. The heart of the project was the partnership between Alchemy Labs [included Kevan Hollenback, Frank Denier and myself ] and the Perfect development team [with Alden Mills and Mark Friedman and their manufacturer].



Project Specification: [May 5th 2008]
The project started out as a simple counting device, defined to measure push up reps while using the Perfect Pushup. It would measure how many and how fast you could do them, even how many could be done within a specified amount of time. The Perfect Pushup raises the user's chest 4.5 inches off the ground, and thus the floor no longer serves as the feedback on a completed pushup stroke. This device should elegantly solve this issue. An engineering sketch was handed to us—it was a simple box with a large button on top. We set out to create the design for this device with one very important goal: To develop and for launch it for Christmas 2008!



First Inspiration - Concept 1: [May 16th 2008]
Normally a product is finished being manufactured by May for a Christmas release that same year, and we were just about to start the Counter’s design. Inspired by Alden’s challenge we jumped in head first! Within the first week we had the big idea visualized. Usually we would take more time to develop and create a range of ideas, but the timing on this program necessitated following our gut. We quickly made a 3D CAD model to illustrate the idea and pitched the design directly to Alden: The design leveraged the circular language of the Perfect Pushup product line and talked to the nature of how the Counter “fit” between the two pushups during use. Most importantly this concept tried to distribute the point of contact with the users chest over the largest area possible in order to make it as comfortable to use as possible. To accomplish this we developed a donut shaped foam pad with the counter display plus controls all located centrally. This Counter “puck” was screwed onto a translucent plastic base, allowing for some level of height adjustment and making the Counter “float” above the ground [like the users exercising themselves].

Next week: Part II -- Making it Work and First Prototypes

Meet Gray Holland, Perfect Counter Designer

Guest blogger: Ian MacColl, Team Leader for Design at Perfect Pushup

Charlie Mike Teammates, I would like to introduce to you a great Perfect Team member: Gray Holland of Alchemy Labs.

Perhaps first, however, I should introduce myself. I am the new team leader for Design here at Perfect Fitness. I come from a background of leading teams at Wham-O and IDEO and am responsible for new products and branding moving forward. I have known Gray Holland for almost 20 years and he is one of the best designers I have worked with over my career. We went to college together in Pasadena, at the Art Center College of Design, and we are now professors and teach together at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

After graduating from Art Center College of Design in the Transportation Design program, Gray moved to Detroit to work at General Motors on, among other things, the original electric car. From there he moved to San Francisco and founded Alchemy Labs in 1993, a practice built on emerging digital technology and strategy. He has consulted with a variety of companies including Nike, Disney, TiVo, Seiko, and BMW.

We are honored (and, of course, FIRED UP) to have him working so closely with us on the exciting new products you will start to see this summer and fall. For the next three weeks, Gray will chronicle the Perfect Counter design process with the readers of CHARLIE MIKE.