Mobility Means Complexity

For our family vacation this year, we drove through parts of New England so our daughters could appreciate the different scenery—the Green Mountains, the coastline, the forests of Maine ... What they mostly saw were the screens of their electronics. This turned me into a shouting tour guide: “Look at that view!” or occasionally, just to make sure they would look up: “Bigfoot!”

Fortunately for me and much to my daughters’ dismay, they lost cellphone coverage in parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. I didn’t blame them for complaining. I didn’t go old man on them and tell them (again) that we didn’t even have FM radio in our car growing up. “It was a simpler time,” as people of every generation invariably say when they reach a certain age. This generation is growing up in an age of constant connectivity—Instagram, Spotify, YouTube and more—it’s what they expect.

That expectation of constant connectivity and mobility is a driving force in just about every industry. Not content with connected computers in our pockets, we’re putting them in every device where they make sense—and in some that don’t. Wearable electronics are the next frontier, according to industry watchers. “In 2014, global mobile data traffic of wearable devices amounted to 15 petabytes per month and is projected to grow to 175 petabytes per month in 2018,” according to Statista. That presents some interesting challenges and opportunities for design engineers.

Engineering increasingly smaller products with constant connectivity opens a can of worms that includes battery requirements, software integration, antennae placement, thermal dynamics, electromagnetic interference and user interfaces, just to name a few. In this month’s issue, we see how the upcoming fifth generation (5G) of wireless systems is expected to help solve some of those issues, but there are other, less technical and more personal requirements to consider when designing wearable devices.

Personalization vs. Platforms

In an in-depth interview in The New Yorker titled “The Shape of Things to Come,” just before the Apple Watch was launched, Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, addressed one of the big differences of designing and engineering wearable technology: personalization.

“Ive’s position was that people were ‘OK, or OK to a degree,’ with carrying a phone that is identical to hundreds of millions of others, but they would not accept this in something that’s worn,” according to the article. “The question, then, was ‘How do we create a huge range of products and still have a clear and singular opinion?’”

Creating a “huge range of products” to satisfy different consumers’ tastes has equally huge ramifications up and down the supply chain. Beyond the design engineering challenges, it equates to more more manufacturing considerations, more stock-keeping units, more retail display space, and the potential for customer service and maintenance issues are multiplied.

Apple, which is almost as famous for its efficient supply chain as it is for design, took a platform approach with the Apple Watch that was similar to what some automakers have done. They chose to produce just two sizes of the device, then addressed personalization with different finishes and watch band options. This approach reduced complexity where it counts most, but still allowed for the personalization that is critical in wearables.

Collaborate to Control Complexity

Common platforms are just one approach to dealing with increasing complexity, and the current wearable market is just the first step toward what Intel CEO Brian Krzanich referred to as “immersive technology” and “computing as an extension of you” at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) keynote in San Francisco in August. “What is changing is that computing and the computing experience is becoming personalized,” he said.

As personalization increases in importance, it will drive even greater collaboration among industrial designers, mechanical, electrical and software engineers. Design and engineering need to work hand-in-hand to make the increasingly complex product development process as efficient as possible.

Design engineering software that enables that collaboration is another part of the solution. But to fully realize the potential of collaboration, that software needs to be part of an infrastructure that supports enterprise-wide data management and sharing initiatives. In the age of immersive technology, everyone will want access to design data.

In the not too distant future, maybe my daughters won’t have to yell at their kids to put down their phones and enjoy the scenery. Their kids might look out the window and still socialize and be entertained via a heads-up display in the glass. And my daughters will remember when they didn’t even have 100% cellular coverage and think “It was a simpler time.”