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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!

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!

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).

Feedback from Parents

Exploring Infant Monitors, Part 2

Over the last six weeks, our team has immersed itself in all things baby and parenting (see Pablo’s recent blog post). From ripping apart different types of monitors to wandering the aisles of Babies ‘R’ Us to talking to countless parents, we’ve done our fair share of research. Here’s a little about what we learned (or affirmed, given what we’d already heard about the market):

• New parents will try anything to make sure their child is safe, secure, and happy. We heard from countless parents who bought one monitor via their registry, and then ended up purchasing, two, three, even six more, as the system either didn’t work out (they ended up wanting video; too many false positives) or broke. This goes for almost every product they buy, whether it’s a carrying system (Baby Bjorn or sling?), activity station (ExerSaucer or Jumperoo?), or sleeping system (bodysuit, footsie, sleepsack, or swaddle?).
• Simplify, simplify, simplify. Because parents end up buying so many products, anything we can do to minimize the “junk factor” is welcomed. We initially thought that parents would want to have a separate handheld, bedside station, but talking to parents proved us wrong – it rapidly became apparent that the majority of parents prefer to use what they already have (i.e. a smartphone), as it’s one less thing to worry about.
• Parents rely on three things to make their purchasing decisions for baby-related shopping: word of mouth (one mom said she literally asked a friend to write a list of everything she should buy and followed it almost exactly); online reviews (Consumer Report, Buy Buy Baby, Babies ‘R’ Us, Amazon, etc); and parenting magazines (either purchased or, more likely, read while sitting at the ob/gyn’s office). It was astounding to hear just how socially sensitive these decisions are, though it also totally makes sense, as parenting is overwhelming and who better to trust than your friends and family who have done it before?
• The market is nuts. Prices for monitors range from $30 to $350, and there is no end to the variations you can purchase (audio, movement, video; ranges from 400 – 1000 feet; internet accessibility; walkie-talkie features; infrared; etc). This could be daunting for us, as we’re a small start-up, but we also know that we’ve got the hustle, know-how, and willingness to learn to make a great new product.
• Each parent’s sleep routine for their baby is a work of art. There are quite a few different solutions and ways of doing things, and each parent has their own discrete system that evolves over time. As a resource constrained startup, we can’t cater to every parent’s individual preferences off the bat, but we’re hoping that initially we can offer a couple of apparel options that will cover a large part of the market. From there, we can start to diversify for everyone else and add in different styles.

At any rate, we’ve loved talking with parents, and we look forward to speaking with many more. If you have any comments or questions, please contact Dulcie at dmadden@restdevices.com – we’d love to hear from anyone and everyone!

OSA and Co-Morbidities: The List Never Ends

Over the last several months (and years), an incredible number of co-morbidities for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) have been found. These include:

• Heart Conditions – a growing body of research has linked apnea to cardiovascular disease, leading to increases in blood pressure and increased risk of stroke and heart attack.
• Daytime Sleepiness – no surprise here but worth mentioning all the same.
• Diabetes – many studies have shown that the severity of OSA (and sleep disordered breathing) predicts type-2 diabetes.
• Tumor Growth – new research emerged in May that showed that people with sleep apnea have a higher risk of cancer, particularly regarding heightened rates of tumor growth.
• Depression – OSA is also linked with depression. A study found that people with depression are five times more likely to have sleep-disordered breathing.
• Weight Management – obesity and OSA are highly correlated as well, and losing weight can help reduce the likelihood of OSA.
• Sexual Dysfunction – research has shown that OSA can cause erectile dysfunction in men and a loss of libido in women, likely due to the disorder’s effect on hormones.

We know that more and more co-morbidities will be uncovered as research around OSA continues, and we look forward to seeing what unfolds. Furthermore, we hope that our SleepShirt will help that research move forward more quickly and accurately, and that we can help diagnose people with OSA and move them towards treatment. If you’d like to use the SleepShirt for your research, please contact us at research@restdevices.com!

Meet the Intern Squadron!

And, yes, by squadron, we mean squadron: we have 8 incredible interns to our 5 fantastic full-time employees. We’re out-numbered, and given the level of Nerf-ness we have in the office, there’s always the potential for a full-scale coup d’état…but it’s worth the risk for just how awesome everyone is. So, without further ado, please meet the Rest Devices Summer 2012 Lineup! Click through the jump to read the bios.

Huayu Ding | Taylor Han | Eunbee Lee

Gro Helene Lerflaten | Andrew Liebendorfer

Luke Plummer | Priya Ramaswamy | Mathias Rygh

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