Jackson Masters

Discovery

The rise of e-commerce convinced us that there was a need for a rugged handheld tool capable of counting, inspecting, and creating 3D models of products.

As we reached out to potential customers, visited their facilities, spoke with workers on the line, and experienced their workflows firsthand, the image of the tool that we would want to use ourselves was brought evermore into focus.

For most of the lifecycle of this project, I owned industrial design, mechanical design, and stress testing.

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When several of my friends unexpectedly broke through some computer vision challenges they had been struggling with, we seized the opportunity to demo the software at CES.

As a result, we needed a way to turn our pile of evaluation boards into a demo of a tool in under twenty-four hours.

As most of the design had to be finished before we could lock what components it would enclose, I created a system of stacking trays that would be easy to swap out as needed.

We arrived at CES with zero prototypes, and we left with four working devices.

When we got back and had a moment to think, we concluded that the largest division in our pool of potential users would be between those who used the device at a workstation and those who would need to carry it with them.

I knocked together a batch of simple tablets with GameBoy style bumper triggers to get a feel for the mobile use case.

The primary takeaway was that capturing the low angle necessary to image the sides and top of most objects was awkward when the camera's optical axis was normal to the screen.

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The back pain caused by hours of dimensioning everything I could find with the tablets was sufficient motivation to give serious thought to the relative angles of screen, handle, and sensor arrays.

After interviewing fulfillment center and postal workers and more narrowly defining the use case with our sales team, I built a new prototype that would allow me to change the angles between components quickly.

I used Humanscale manual data to create sets of angles for our two most common dimensioning tasks and recruited a demographically representative pool of participants to evaluate them.

Their responses allowed me to select a layout that worked well for the majority of users.

Intended as a replacement for both barcode scanners and measuring tapes, this device measured an object, tagged the dimensions to its barcode, and pushed the data with one pull of the trigger.

Our first significant field trial was at Comiket in partnership with Japan Post. For the duration of the convention, attendees used our devices to measure their purchases and mail them home. All of our handbuilt prototypes survived.

Ultimately, our focus shifted to the mobile dimensioning stations, and this project fell by the wayside. The power consumption of the sensor was much easier to accommodate when you can carry a massive battery around with you.

Our intended next steps were to add overmolding, hot swappable batteries, and to begin getting it ready to pass IP67.