The Workwise Smartband was an HP incubation project focused on exploring smart office concepts using wearable and IoT devices. The effort aimed to explore ways to simplify the employee work life while also benefitting the enterprise with security improvements and operational savings.
The device we came up with was the next-generation employee badge, which enabled users to securely and anonymously unlock office doors, laptops, desktops, printers, and any other auth-required devices in the office. The band also featured indoor proximity detection, which enabled meeting auto-start, regional temperature control, proximity printing, and indoor GPS.
HP Labs Product Innovation & Incubation Group
Sr. UI/UX Architect & Product Manager
Product Requirements, User Journeys, User Flow Wireframes, Concept Decks, Illustrations, Video Animation, and Visual Design.
My contributions to the project came in a few forms. I served in the area of Product Management, Product Design, and Animation. I produced a myriad of assets to help define and convey the product feature set and get buy-in from execs.
I also assisted in the hardware experience, designing the hardware OS, navigational flows, lighting sequences, button use, screen choice, charging sequence, and a few others.
Here are the main high-level consumer-facing features we included in our first version of the band. One of the most important philosophies we kept throughout the design process was to create an experience that users preferred to have than not. To do that, we needed the product to respect employee privacy while providing capabilities that made work life easier.
With this project, we ran into a slew of experience challenges due to the breadth of the feature set. From creating hardware from scratch to making Bluetooth do indoor GPS magic to ensuring the technology was trustworthy vs. creepy / big brother.
We also ran into experience challenges around day-to-day use. For example: How often does a user have to charge? Or, how do you maintain persistent authentication? What size screen does the interface need to be in order to be useful and easily read while allowing for once-a-week charging?
One of the things I love so much about what I do for a living is the crazy brainiacs I get the pleasure of working with on a daily. A concept like this would never be possible without the synthesis of so many brilliant minds.
Just to incubate this product, we needed to bring together: Chip Design, Mechanical & Industrial Design, Radio & Bluetooth Eng., Software, UX, Manufacturing, User Research, Business Dev, and Partnerships - to name a few. It's safe to say it takes a village to do something this cutting-edge.
From the project's onset, we wanted to keep a few principles in mind during the development effort. The band needed to be:
Below are a couple of examples of User Journeys and Flows. The User Journey depicts how a user uses the smart band while working. The user flow shows the steps required to authenticate the band.
Here are a few early concepts showing screens of various key features we took into account.
Here is an animation I created to show the first-time a user pairs and sets up their band. One of the interesting but fun challenges was finding the balance between the hardware requirements, bill of materials (BOM) costs, and the user's experience. We needed a screen with a high enough pixel density and a high enough refresh rate to display enough information yet maintain a highly cheap cost to manufacture. And, only require to be recharged once a week.
Below illustrates not only the initial animation sequence but also maps to the refresh rate, pixel density, and screen size constraints we needed to consider in order to choose the correct form factor.
One of the objectives we were trying to achieve was to make this concept available not just with our hardware but also with other devices, such as an iWatch or a mobile phone. While these devices wouldn't provide persistent authentication like our band, we found it important to provide optionality for employees who preferred not to use the band yet wanted to still leverage most of the product's features.
Here is a promo video I produced, filmed, animated, and scored with the help of some friends/colleagues. The purpose of this video was to serve as a promo to showcase the concept, its features, and the product's benefits. Fun fact, my colleague Shannon Norrell and I recorded the audio in HP's very own anechoic chamber.
