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We’re Launching our Peeko Beta!

We’ve been moving full-steam ahead with Peeko development over the last few months, and we’re super excited about some of the changes we’ve made: the form factor (i.e. look and feel) is a thousand times improved; our sensors are insanely durable now so that they’ll withstand even the most explosive blowout; the WiFi setup and reliability is remarkably improved; we’ve add audio; aaand, the app UI//UX is in the process of being overhauled.

Though we’re thrilled with the improvements, we know we have to go back to the classroom and get it into the hands of parents. Thus, we’re launching our beta at the start of May, and we can’t wait to get feedback. If you’d like to participate (and we’d love to have you!), head on over to www.peekobaby.com and sign up. If you have any questions, feel free to email us at contact@peekobaby.com – we’d love to hear from you!

Parents + A Makerbot = Better, Faster, Stronger Product

Initially, Rest Devices focused solely on medical devices. We had some great technology, solid engineering know how, and some rough prototypes, but to iterate on our design, we needed data, and medical devices need…medical data. From the start, Dr. Matt Bianchi provided excellent guidance to help us navigate the IRB and BME processes, and we knew our prototypes had to look and feel complete – like an actual medical device.

Then, last summer, we switched over to the consumer space with the Peeko monitor. We wholly expected that our prior requirements for polished prototypes would relax, as  we were moving from the FDA to parents as our “regulatory bodies”. However, we quickly found that parents are far more demanding. For a parent to be comfortable testing a new device it needs to be approachable, friendly and most importantly, not look like a device! In short, it needs to be polished. (It’s worth noting that, early on, Dulcie demanded that I never say the word device while talking about Peeko)

This principle of polished prototypes seemingly flew in the face of our entire rapid prototyping philosophy. When we were first developing the Peeko, we probably went through 5-10 different versions of the device every week, but ultimately, we had to be comfortable taking each version to a parent to get their input. If the design ever felt unpolished, a parent would never get past the aesthetic problems let alone talk about the actual usability or the feature set. As a result, we started a culture of refined prototyping right from the very beginning.

And, even before we had a thought about baby products and/or refined aesthetics, we set ourselves up for prototyping. One of our first significant expenditures was actually one of the original MakerBot Thing-O-Matics, which we bought before we even had enough tools to build it. This allowed us to print complete, water tight(ish) cases that would easily pass any BME exam for a quick medical test in the sleep lab. From our success with our MakerBot, we started to collect as many tools as possible to allow us to iterate design in lab. Instead of sending out electronics to be fabricated for us, we built a complete surface mount soldering screening/soldering area (we still pick and place by hand). Instead of waiting 2+ weeks for boards to be etched, we designed our own PCB printing and etching tank. As we started to work closely with parents who required extremely high quality, we bought our own hand operated injection molding machine.

Surprisingly, all the equipment didn’t require much capital expenditures, and now we can completely change design (new electronics, case, sensors) for hundreds rather than tens of thousands of dollars. But more importantly, we can also experiment with new technology amazingly quickly. A few days ago, we decided to hold an internal 24 hour hackathon and challenge ourselves to see if we could integrate heart rate and blood oxygen sensors into Peeko. Because of our investment in rapid prototyping equipment, we were able to test and iterate through 4 designs before finalizing a device that we will likely test in a hospital setting, all within 24 hours. Needless to say, it was mind-blowing to see our capacity to rapidly iterate that wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago.

Sadly, our MakerBot finally wore itself out a few weeks back. After 18 months of printing a few thousand pieces for more than 50 hours every week, it was well past its expected lifespan. The breakdown nearly crushed me, but the amazing team at MakerBot graciously donated one of their new Replicator 2s (R2) to our lab (THANK YOU, MAKERBOT!). We have been playing with the new Makerbot for two weeks now, and the quality and speed is astonishing. With these vast improvements in technology and our iteration philosophy, I predict massive shifts in our manufacturing timelines, particularly the transition from testing to manufacturing. Ultimately, we’re starting to be able to print such high quality devices that injection molding is more or less unnecessary until we produce at scale. This might not seem like a super big deal, but now we can build and iterate entirely new products in less than a week (as opposed to several months with traditional manufacturing processes).

As a startup who prides ourselves on our speed, we could not be more excited about these shifts in timelines. We can’t wait to share our process and technology with other like-minded tinkerers, and I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Working at an Early Stage Startup: Chaos, Insanity, Hard Work, and Awesomeness

People often ask me what I do at work. It’s a bit of a tricky question, and to be honest, this is the first time I’ve ever actually written about my role at Rest. So, hopefully this post will help me reflect on my role (and on just what exactly I’ve been working on for the last year) and will also provide some insight into what a new hire does in his/her first year or so at a startup.

I started working at Rest (then called Nyx Devices) as a senior at MIT, coming in about 20 hours a week and doing odds and ends. The company was very much in its infancy then, and our main focus was still figuring out just what we wanted the company to be. Though I was never really involved with strategic decision making of the company, my first couple of months at Nyx saw me immediately jump into a role as primary investigator for sensor development, something that is still being worked on as I write this post (Note: I did a lot of work! It’s not that I’ve been slacking! Sensor development is complicated and is legitimately a lot of work!).

That in and of itself is pretty noteworthy, as typically (at least for at all of the internships, lab jobs, and pretty much every other job I’ve ever had) the very first thing a “new” person is put on, especially at a hardware-oriented job, is just getting hands-on experience in any way possible. Usually that just means offloading a bunch of applied tasks to said “new” person, primarily because the current employee doesn’t actually want to do those tasks themselves. The difference at Nyx was that nothing could really be “pawned off” to the intern (me) and forgotten about, because everything we were working on was crucial to deciding the future of the company. So, in this way, Nyx engaged me early on in a way that none of my other jobs had. Instead, from the very beginning, I worked on something vitally important to the development of the company and had to integrate seamlessly with every team member in the company.

Now, fast forward a few months. In June, I’d graduated from MIT and pretty much started working full-time straightaway. I have one intern who reports directly to me, and it’s pretty fair to say that he’s more of a traditional “task doer” (though it’s worth noting that he totally crushed his internship). There are also big changes afoot at the company, which is now called Rest Devices. By mid-August, we’ve moved into the baby monitor market and have a brand new focus: coming up with a working prototype for a baby products trade show in October.

So, not only was I still continuing in my role as primary sensor development investigator, I was figuring out how to manage an intern (which, to me meant incorporating him into my workplan, teaching him how to do things, and ensuring he wasn’t bored out of his mind) and also taking on a new role as head of mobile app development. All of a sudden, we went from being a medical device company with a 2 year timeline to needing an app and baby monitor prototype in 6 weeks. One day, I was the least involved with strategic decisions in the company. The next day, I was one of the most, with a hand in both the outward facing aspects of the company (helloooooo UI/UX and parent testing) and inward facing aspects. I had multiple things I was responsible for, and I was also responsible for providing direction to other people, which seriously wasn’t where I’d thought I’d be three months out of school. It just goes to show, though, that anything can happen at a startup, and your entire role (and title!) can alter dramatically in the course of a single meeting.

And, as of today, my role at Rest is set to change again. Now in my 16th month at the company in some capacity or another (yikes), we are prepping for another semi-crazy frenzy of development in order to ship our first product in 6 months. We are no longer focused on exploring new product ideas or coming up with working prototypes. Instead, everything now centers on taking what we currently have, refining it, and making sure:

1. We can come up with a way to build not ten, not one hundred, but thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of them, and
2. The product we ship will work 110% of the time in a new parents’ home.

My role in making this happen is still yet to be fully determined, but most likely I will be doing a combination of my current responsibilities, plus coordinating with outside suppliers and vendors to ensure we have all the necessary components of Peeko ready when we start our first production run. This time, my work will focus on the little things, such as “if we put our turtle through the wash, will it survive?” And, if what we have right now won’t survive, then we have less than 3 months to come up with a design that will (if we want to be ready for setting up with manufacturers with time to sample, test, order, and ship, that is). So, shocker: my role at the company is drastically shifting again, and I haven’t even made it to my first college graduation anniversary.

In some ways, my ever-changing role here is a perfect reflection of a startup in its infancy. Initially, I had no idea where I was going with this company, just as this company had no clear vision for its own future. Gradually, as I took on more and more responsibility, the company also etched a solid path to growth and actual profits. And now, as I prepare to lead multiple aspects of development, the company will commit itself to a path that enables the (imminent) launch of our very first product! If that’s not exciting (and slightly insane), then I don’t know what is.

Things That Keep Me Up at Night: Building a Brand

Our team has thought a lot about the One Trick Pony effect, and how to avoid it with a specific product like the Peeko (as opposed to the sensor tech itself, which is more broadly applicable). Our dream is to build a family of products, wherein we have one distinct product that targets every stage of a baby and child’s life. To do this, though, we need to build a brand that has serious street cred and which is trustworthy, relevant, and beloved by parents. How do we do that? First, we know we need to create exceptional and insanely reliable products. Second (and this is obviously connected to the first), we need to create a phenomenal user and brand experience across every aspect of what we do.

There’s one brand that has etched this fact indelibly into my brain: Makerbot. You may already know this, but we are obsessed with Makerbot at our office. Our Thing-o-Matic is constantly referenced as the best engineering purchase we’ve ever made, and our TOM runs for at least 40 hours a week. We use it for all of our prototyping, for making toys for families we’re product testing with, and for “enhancing” our office (see picture of our new mobile-enabled bike rack below). Soon after I joined the team, I started calling our TOM MakerBaby because of how Thomas takes care of it: our scrappy little bot is fully retuned at least once a month, and it’s been upgraded in pretty much every imaginable way. This isn’t to say that we’re not seriously in love with the new Replicator 2; in fact, the guys ask every day when they can get a R2. But, at the end of the day, the TOM is absolutely beloved at 105 South street, and we literally couldn’t work without her.

However, on top of this product excellence, we’ve been lucky to work pretty closely with the team. Andrew put together an all-too-amazing blog post featuring Thomas (see here, and be sure to watch until at least 0:26, as we find it hilarious), the Peeko got an image shoutout in their NYMag feature, and we’ve been super lucky to talk with the team about everything from upgrades to fixes to startup questions to babies. Everyone we’ve talked to is insanely responsive and helpful, and every interaction just amplifies our love for the team, product, and company as a whole.

On another level, Carson and I visited the Makerbot store when we were in NY in December, and it was exactly the same thing (but visually improved, since we were surrounded with superneat Makerbotted stuff; see below). I believe Carson’s quote was literally “this is awesome! every ‘sales’ person here is actually a full Makerbot user!” Though we’d expect nothing less, we were super impressed with the level of technical knowledge and alacrity the staff demonstrated, and our little Makerbotted hearts nearly exploded.

Then, yesterday, our TOM broke. Thomas pretty much started hyperventilating (I kid you not), but he had the presence of mind to email Andrew and see if he could find him a special, likely no-longer-manufactured part. The problem was solved in minutes, and we think we’ll have Makerbaby healed and running again by the end of the week, which is huge for us. We can’t thank the Makerbot team enough for their incredible support, and I think I’m still sort of shocked / in awe at the speed at which the team came to our rescue.

It’s experiences like these that make lifelong brand devotees, and it gave me serious pause. In fact, I literally wasn’t able to sleep last tonight because I was trying to figure out how we were going to achieve the same level of excellence as we move forward. I mean, branding certainly can’t be created and built with one sleepness night of hamster-esque thinking; rather, it’s a marathon of genuine responsiveness, quality, and almost obsessive support for your customers and users. Aesthetics and messaging definitely play a role as well, and we have to craft everything we do so that it resonates with parents (and to that end, we’ll be testing all our branding like crazy with users).  Finally, it’s about creating the right team and ensuring that every person buys into your brand and is deeply attuned to the customer’s experience, as it’s likely that every person on a start-up team will be user-facing at some point.

These are big things to think about, and, yes, they’ll probably keep me up for many more sleepless nights. But, the good news is that I think I actually think we’ll be okay (and far better than okay at that). We’re super team-focused, we work exceptionally hard to stay close to users and parents, and we try to be pretty OCD about responsiveness and support. This will become astronomically harder as we move towards Peeko’s launch, as we build sales, and as we roll out additional products. But, we believe it’s totally possible, especially if we have our Makerbot to pull us through

Building a Product that Lets Parents Rest Better and Longer

I am the fifth of six kids, which meant that the mentality of “helicopter parenting” or “ever-present parental fear and anxiety” wasn’t part of my own upbringing. However, I started babysitting when I was 12, have nannied, and also have 7 nieces and nephews, so I’ve seen a pretty decent spectrum of parenting styles and mentalities. While I’m not a parent, I have definitely crept into a baby’s room countless times to make sure they’re still breathing, and I’ve nearly had a heart attack when I thought they weren’t (I cannot even imagine what happens when you’re a mother). Though I like to think that I’ll be as naturally cool and collected as my mom, I seriously doubt that’s going to be the case, and I know I’ll be using Peeko whenever it is that I do become a mom.

As we’ve developed Peeko, we’ve worked to be as user-centered as possible; we’ve talked to hundreds of parents about their families, their demands, their monitors, their painpoints, and their likes/dislikes. As we’ve done this, our goal has been to create a product that is attuned to what parents actually want, that does not induce or fuel a parent’s already natural and ever-present stress, and which is as simple and reassuring as possible. We, and Peeko, are working to provide a smarter, more trustworthy peace of mind for parents, and thus far, we’ve had fantastic feedback from our test families about the best ways to do that.

Though we’ve gotten a positive response thus far, we recognize that Peeko isn’t for everyone. For example, two of my cousins (who are first-time parents) had a gut reaction of “huh…could be interesting, but I’m really just not that worried about my baby; I mean, maybe I should be, but I’m just…not”. And, there has been a few posts and commentary about whether smart, data-focused monitors are overkill. We can see how Peeko could be perceived that way, particularly if it worked in a way that increased anxiety for parents. However, that’s absolutely the opposite of what we’re trying to do, as we believe there is zero reason to make a parent question their baby’s ability to thrive or their own inherent skillset.

Additionally, we know that parents have a hectic, sleep-deprived life. Many of the new moms (and dads) we’ve talked to have spoken about waking up throughout the night and not being able to stop thinking about whether their baby was still breathing. Audio and video monitors don’t provide an adequate level of detail to qualm their fears, so most parents talk about getting up and actually placing their hand on their baby’s chest to confirm actual respiration. And, many new parents talked about their concern evolving from breathing to if their baby was rolling over to overheating and then to sleep training. Peeko can actually address all over these concerns, and we’re hoping to do it in the most restful way possible; we really want parents to have a product that will help them stay in bed and get a little extra sleep.

We know we’re not experts, though, so we are going to keep talking to parents as often as possible. We have at least two more round of product development to go through, and we’ll be testing features, UI/UX, and our industrial design every step of the way. Peeko may not be made by parents, but we are certainly making it FOR parents.

As always, if you have any thoughts, please don’t hesitate to contact Dulcie at dmadden@restdevices.com. We love any and all feedback!

The Greatest Classroom of All

Peeko Product Testing with Parents

Thus far, we’ve gone through about three weeks of testing with the Peeko. When we started, we knew we’d likely have some significant bugs, particularly around Wi-Fi connectivity. And, lo-and-behold, we did, and we saw a few other major mechanical bugs (battery life and the on/off switch to name two) as well as some software and server side issues. All of that said, we still managed to get a lot of fantastic data that is enabling us to significantly improve our algorithms. In the end, we got a solid, and surprisingly consistent, bug list that has given us a very specific list of improvements as we work through our next redesign.

And, the parents we worked with gave us wonderful feedback about their interaction and experience with Peeko, from turtle shape to onesie design to app feature set. A few of the major things we learned along the way:

• Simplify, simplify. Parents love anything that saves time or makes their life easier. A great example of this is the on/off switch—one of the biggest problems was that parents couldn’t immediately tell what was on and what was off. So, we’re redesigning the entire power on/off process to make it simple and super easy.
• Focus, focus. It was fascinating to see how different parents valued different types of data. Depending on how old their infant was or how many children in the family, parents assigned significantly different values to breathing data, body position, skin temperature, or overall activity levels. What this taught us is that we should indeed be focusing on each of these factors, but that we in turn need to focus on executing perfectly on each of them. Figuring out how to intuitively visualize respiration is going to be huge in terms of helping parents understand what they’re seeing, and we’re working on testing a few different options.

We have a lot of industrial design work to do, and there are a ton of variables to think about in terms of design: the shape of the turtle, the type of material we use for the shell, what surface coating we select, color, everything. Ensuring that the turtle is super-durable while also being soft and super-cute is a challenge we’re excited to work on.

We are incredibly fortunate, however, in that we have worked with incredible families thus far. The moms and dads’ that we’ve worked with have been incredibly specific, responsive, and supportive for Peeko and our team, and we are so thankful for their insight and feedback. Our goal is always to tailor Peeko to what parent’s actually want and need, so having a group of rockstar test parents is key to helping us do that.

Ultimately, we’ll be going through at least three more rounds of product design and testing, and our sample sizes will get larger and larger to enable exceptional confidence. We can’t wait to get another version out with parents again—if you’re interested in being a test family for Peeko, please email Dulcie (dmadden@restdevices.com).

Continuing Education at Rest Devices

Myth Busting the Most Challenging Scientific Principles of All Time

Something everyone should know about our team is that we are obsessive experimenters. Everything in life is seen as a potential problem to fix, whether it’s figuring out the best way to make extreme modifications to a NERF gun** or figuring out how to build a smart, motorized ceiling-anchored bike rack.

Recently, this obsession has turned into weekly myth busters missions. We’ll inevitably be in the office late over the weekend (or during a hurricane), and Thomas and Chao will pick some urban legend or challenge to test. Here’s the latest and greatest results of our obsessive personalities:

Do Doritos Light On Fire?

Yes. Absolutely. We actually thought we were going to set off the fire alarms.

Does Eating Mentos and Rapidly Drinking Diet Coke Make Your Stomach Explode?

No. It does create incredible burps and lead to fairly extreme stomach discomfort, however. Both of which are hilarious.

Is It Possible to Use Hurricane-Force Winds to Perfectly Arc a Nerf Bullet Toward A Target?

Well, if we had our current armory of modified Nerfs, maybe. Using what we had during Hurricane Sandy? Not so much. We got pretty close, though.

Given how much time we spend at the office, we know that we’ll absolutely be tackling more myths. If there’s anything you want us to test, email Chao (che@restdevices.com) and we’ll take it on. We love doing “science” experiments and tinkering with just about anything, so nothing is too crazy. Seriously.

**here’s the latest in NERF modifications:

All of the Lights

Rest Devices and Peeko head to ABC Kids

After making our pivot to a baby monitor in mid-August, we focused with laser-like intensity on one deadline: the ABC Kids trade show in October. ABC Kids is the US’s largest juvenile products trade show, and it was held this year from October 14-17 in Louisville, Kentucky.

We had some clear goals for the tradeshow:

• Have a working product kit that had been through at least one round of testing with families in the field;
• Meet our targeted list of retailers, which included both specialty brick and mortar stores as well as the national chains;
• Develop press contacts and relationships with as many people and outlets as possible;
• Gauge overall reception of the product and get feedback;
• Meet as many potential partners as we can;
• Finally, given that we were all so new to the baby / infant space, we went there to learn as much as we possibly could.

Overall, it was a great success, and it was essentially like retail bootcamp: we learned a ton about retail timelines, about the juvenile products community, and about how to position ourselves for next year. We met just about everyone we wanted to, generated great buzz, and developed a ton of new relationships with retailers and other product companies. And, we just learned so, so much—I don’t think anyone on our team correctly anticipated the madness and scope that is ABC Kids.

We also made a ton of excellent friends (Kiinde Guys + Greater than One Kids Ladies, we’re looking at you!) and we managed to bring some classic MIT nerdery to the show (we provided WiFi for all of our booth’s neighbors).

The product development timeline leading up to the show was absolutely bananas, but our success in testing, at the show, and beyond made it all worthwhile. We’re already looking forward to next year’s show in Vegas!

Uber-Efficient Product Development: Rapid Design and Prototyping

As you may know, we’re into rapid prototyping at Rest Devices (check out this stellar – and inadvertently hilarious – post by the folks at Makerbot). We use our Thing-O-Matic 3D printer for just about everything, and we just got a desktop injection-molding machine that takes our plastics development to the next level. Our compulsive habit of “iterating › testing › iterating” has served us exceptionally well as we’ve worked on Peeko. Not everything works (not so surprising), but some things actually end up working really well (super surprising). And, perhaps best of all, we’ve been able to do this on a ridiculously fast timeline. Yes, we work hard, as seen in Thomas’ histogram of his caffeine consumption for the first three weeks of product development here, but our ability to cycle through ideas and gather feedback has been critical to our process thus far.

There are a hundred different things that we’ve worked on, and here are a couple of highlights:

• Our sensor design has changed quite a bit. Not only did we have to make the sensors more appealing for baby apparel – the goal is to get moms to squee with delight when they see the Peeko bodysuit—we also had to increase the durability significantly. The SleepShirt sensors were designed for about 7 nights’ worth of testing, but Peeko is meant to be used day-to-day. Add the never-ending struggle to dress a squirmy baby, and our engineering team has had an interesting challenge.  The results, while not visible to the naked eye, have thus far been a great new sensor design we are currently testing. Stay posted to see how these continue to evolve!

Our bodysuit progress thus far.

• We are by no means experts in smartphone app design, but we knew parents could tell us what we’re doing right and wrong and go from there. We also can’t discount the emphasis we have placed on displaying data to parents—our goal is to provide parents with peace of mind, not more anxiety. To do so, we’ve been working through the best and simplest ways to show parents that their baby is, in fact, a-ok (and the most convenient way of letting them know that something is awry). We’re admittedly not there yet, but we are focusing a significant part of our effort into getting this component right, and we look forward to hearing from more parents as we test over the next several weeks.

Phone app snapshots

Dulcie and Chao in a heated debate over our app user flow!

 

We are incredibly thankful to all the parents we’ve worked with and who have answered question after question; we know that parenting is exhausting, and your help has pushed this product to where it is now. We can’t wait to get a great product into the hands of every caring parent, but, in the meantime, we’ll keep iterating, testing, and proto-typing!

And, if you’d like to provide feedback, we’d love to hear from you! Just contact me at pbello@restdevices.com or Dulcie Madden at dmadden@restdevices.com.

Pablo & Dulcie

Small Style: The Titans of the Baby Design World

At the start of our monitor adventure, most of my baby-product knowledge came from two sources: babysitting/nannying and my extremely large family. However, I’ve been out of the baby universe for a while, and my intel was quite out of date. Thus, when we started digging around the baby product world, I was super excited to find some amazing companies who made me go “WOW!”.  This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s who we (as a team) have found to be most inspiring when it comes to design.

• Kiinde: Kiinde is another engineering-centered baby product company. It’s hard to find companies who come to the infant space with hard engineering background, but Kiinde has done an awesome job of merging their mega technical know-how with simple, highly functional, appealing design. And, they’re great guys.
• Magnificent Baby: MB took ease of dressing babies to another level with their magnet-snap apparel. Not only does it make the process so much easier, they also have cute patterns and a neat-o logo (and call their bodysuits “burritos”, which is both awesome and hilarious). They’re also a great team.
• 4Moms: I mean, really. These guys brought everything baby and parenting to the next level. Seriously. From the Origami to the Mamaroo, this company has got baby-tech down pat. Their products are both technically complicated (self-folding, iPhone-charging strollers!) but simple, their design aesthetic is clean and modern, and they too were started by engineers. In short, we love it.
• Zutano: Cutest, most adorable patterns for baby clothes. Period. We. Love. Them.
• Aden + Anais: We had no clue that swaddles were such a huge trend now, but after we got our hands on Aden + Anais’s supersoft and ubercute muslin swaddles, we saw why they’ve taken off. We seriously wish they made them for grown-ups.
• Bugaboo: Makers of the ultra-luxury stroller, the original high-end baby product, Bugaboo changed the game for everyone who thought that the Diaper Genie was the apex of infant-product innovation. Yeah, their prices are high, but their design is no joke and they’re still an elite brand all these years later.

This is just the tip of the iceberg – there are so, so many more companies that could be listed here (I want to buy everything 3 Sprouts makes for my nieces and nephews). But, it’s been amazing to see how the baby space has transformed over the last decade. These companies have set the bar extremely high for design value, but we look forward to rising to the challenge and making the Peeko not only highly functional but also stylish (and cute, since just we can’t resist).