WatchOn

Hi all,

I hope you’re doing well.

The WatchOn team is reaching Milestone 5 (24 June) and we are working to get ready for it.

In terms of Software, the major parts of the app have been designed and we began the development of the POC three weeks ago. We are now able to communicate with the backend!

Regarding the Hardware, we are facing a few problems regarding the manufacture access but we still do our best.

Have a nice week and cheers,

Christophe

Hi everyone,

Here’s some news about the WatchOn’s Milestone4 from last Wednesday! The meeting went well and we’ve had a lot of good feedback!

A great job was done to rework for the cleanest and more user-friendly frontend of the app. This was the result of six precious health givers’ feedbacks and improvements. More on that in the next coming weeks!

We also had the chance to work with a brand-new company called Griffin Leathercraft. This partnership allows us to be able to make a real leather prototype within a few hours. In addition, they had great pieces of advice for our future developments.

A small and practical charging station was also presented
last Wednesday and returns were very positive and useful!

Next steps, integrate all the advice in our future developments and move as quickly as possible on version 2.0!

Have a good week to you all and stay tuned for the upcoming updates!

Hello everybody ! Hope everyone is doing well !

I lot of progress have been done by the team recently in order to get ready for MS4. We got a prototype of our strap made with leather which integrate the batteries. The result is impressive as we can barely notice the batteries.  The bad part is that the capacity reminds pretty low. However. we already got some ideas to improve that issue.

From another hand, we start working on a simple way to charge the strap.

With the current situation we had to postponed some of the tests that we wanna do on the patients in order to validate the easy use of our application. We also hope to be able to order some parts anytime soon.

Have a nice Sunday and stay home !

Hi everyone,

This week has been really busy. After weeks of hard work and iterations, we are happy to announce that the final WatchOn brand is out 🥳🎉

Its logo gives you an overview of the whole brand look and feel. We wanted it to be modern and simple because our mission is crystal clear: help people take care of others 🤝

In terms of colors, we wanted the brand to feel welcoming and comforting. That is why we chose to combine different warm orange tons with classy levels of grey. The brand uses a single modern font-family, Plain, which fits very well for both digital and print use. Hopefully, you will able to discover more about our brand in futures blog posts & glimpses 👀

The whole team continues to do its best despite the current extraordinary situation. We hope that all of you are still able to work on the project too.

Have a nice week everyone and stay safe 🤞🏻

Hello everybody,

This week we have received some bad news from our team members …

The first and most important one, Lucie, head of the industrial design, leaves the CHIC. Following a discussion with her supervisor, it was decided that she would no longer work on our project due to the lack of design. We wish her all the best in his new project.

To continue, Ricardo, in charge of the electronic part, told us that because of the COVID-19, it will be impossible to access the lab in order to develop the PCB. In agreement with his supervisor, he order a new development kit. This one is much larger than what we wanted.

This news impact on the work of Bastien, our microtechnician. He thinks it’s impossible to integrate such a large device in the first box he design.

This is why we decided to work on two different prototypes. The firs one will be functional but not integrated in one piece while the second one will represent the final objectif of integration.

Because of this pandemic, user tests of the straps and the application are becoming more complicated. We are still looking for a good solutions.

Despite this, there is still good news. Christophe has finished his courses and can therefore start focusing full time on the development of the application. For my part, the development of the backend takes place without too much problem.

We hope that everyone is doing well and that each project can move forward without too much difficulty.

Have a nice week and see you soon.

Hi everyone,

We hope that you all had a great week-end! During this time, we focused our efforts on improving our design, especially to make things smaller. A great work has been made on the PCB development as well as on the electronic enclosure.

Things need to be small but also user friendly. That’s why we are thinking over the way to recharge the device. Fortunately, we have some great concepts to solve this issue.

Concerning the logistics, we are confindent to be able to order the first parts in the coming weeks!

Happy Easter to you all!

Hello everybody,

Recently we had the opportunity to meet with our supervisors for the milestone 3. Since there we have and are reconsidering the design of our strap. We are looking for something more universal that will be compatible with the majority of the watches (Men and women). By the way we just made a prototype of the strap case and notice that this one is a bit big.

With the current situation, we are getting late with the R&D. In fact, we have limited resources and cannot order anything.

In other words, we are limited but still have a lot of work to do. We hope to come with better news soon.

Stay home

Hi everyone,

We hope everyone is well in this period of isolation.

After this first week at home, the team was still able to progress towards MS3. The branding is in progress and the first communication between the straps and the server will soon be done.

However, the team is concerned about covid-19. We hope to get more information this Friday during MS3.

Be careful and stay home.

See you next week.

Hi everyone,

We hope you are all doing well! From our side, we keep on working to have our first prototype ready as soon as possible. We are currently focusing on having our strap compatible with a large number of watches.

The objective for milestone 3 is to be able to offer different alternatives on the hardware/design side such as different closing mechanisms and different battery integrations.

Concerning the other parts of the project, the researches continue on the application side. For the back end, we have a start of API and for the front end, the first wireframe versions are ready! Concerning the electronics, we are ready to order the GPS & NB-Iot development module.

Further informations will come next week!

In the meantime, stay safe!

Hello everybody,

So far so good ! The tests that we have been doing on the patients are positives, which means that the patient doesn’t reject the strap.

From the technical perspective, we decide to go with the technology NB-IoT over LaRa Network for several reasons. One of them is that we want the coverage to be as good as possible around the world and this is something that we can achieve with NB-IoT.

The first design of the application has been made and the team is working hard to make a first prototype as soon as possible.

More news will come soon !

Good evening

Good evening everyone,

This week has been very encouraging for us. Since the lift-off weekend, we had a few doubts about the desirability of our watch strap.

As was rightly pointed out to us, we didn’t know whether changing the strap would mean changing the watch itself for a person with Alzheimer’s. That is why we decided to make a full-scale test.

We took the watch from a person with Alzheimer’s and replace the watch’s strap. We really feared his reaction, but actually loved it! He did not see it as a problem but as a gift! He was super excited about wearing his new old watch again (and did during the whole test, which last for one complete week)!

As only one person does not represent the whole population, we are going to retest our solution to other people, just to be sure to have a good and purposeful solution.

In next week’s post, we will have more info to share about it!

Have a nice week everyone!

Good evening everyone,

I think we all share the same feeling: what a weekend! So much to analyze, to understand and to think about…

We got a lot of important insights and very useful feedback from all supervisors; thanks again! We uncovered tons of tiny details that will definitely shape our next prototypes and the final solution.

Thanks to John Fass, we understood the importance of data management in our project, moreover as we are designing a “surveillance” object. We still have to think about the way we want to use the collected data to only help people, not to threaten their human rights.

On the other hand, the weekend allowed us to define in more detail what technology we will use and how the global functionalities will work. We identified important steps that will impact our future choices :
– We need to validate the solution with real users (person with Alzheimer)!
– We need insights from caregivers
– We have to explore the LoRa swiss system in more depth

In the next blogpost we will probably be able to provide you more insights.

In the meantime, have all a good week! Cheers!

Hello everybody,

It was a very special week for us, we found our solution!

As it has been said in the previous post, we took some steps back by giving up on the contraceptive pill to go with the Alzheimer disease.

All this means that the last few weeks have been intense for use. After looking around for the best solution, we came up with several ideas that we had the opportunity to present to our supervisors last Friday. During this meeting we got valuable feedback that permit us to valid one of our solution.

So, the team is going with a smart watch strap. The idea is to change only the strap of the watch from the patient so it will still look familiar to him. From an engineering point, this strap is going to be challenging with several technologies like GPS and GSM in a package as small as possible.

More news will follow next weekend 😉

Speak soon!

Hi everyone,

As said in the previous post, we decided to focus on the Alzheimer’s problem. Thanks to different phone interviews, we had the opportunity to find a lot of different insights and test our previous ideas. Here is a quick reminder about our two last solutions :

• A connected watch/ bracelet that would display daily tasks as well as perform GPS tracking
• A watch strap that would integrate GPS tracking

After discussing these options with a specialized institute, we discovered the two main difficulties for a connected object used by a person with Alzheimer  :

• We need to build an object that doesn’t directly require any major interaction because the learning process would be too difficult for the person.
• In case we would like to develop a kind of GPS tracker, we need to build a nice and comfortable object without any medical connotation. The purpose of this is to have the highest acceptance as possible in order to avoid the person to remove the tracker.

We have a bunch of different ideas but it is quite difficult for us to find our main differentiator. A lot of solutions already exist for this kind of problem. Thus we are going to discuss our ideas with our supervisors to get some advice.

Next week we will probably be able to give more details about the chosen solution.

Have a good week everyone!

Good evening everyone,

These last few weeks have been difficult for “Lucie et ses Garçons”.

Following our meeting with our coaches and our weekly team meeting, we took over everything from the start. After long discussions, we decided to abandon our idea regarding the contraceptive pill and thus focus on our other found opportunities.

The team was able to find the motivation to seek specific information regarding the needs of people affected by Alzheimer’s disease. We called two institutes specializing in the field to gather as much information as possible. Following the raw information received, we already have some prospects in mind and above all a greater confidence in the usefulness of the project.

Following our meeting on Monday, we were able to analyze in detail the information provided by these institutes. We have drawn the following problems :

• The precise location at all times of people with Alzheimer’s is very important.
• These people tend to put down and forget their objects if they are not part of their daily life or if they no longer know what the object is for (like a watch that shut down when it has no battery).
• Being able to generate reminders (eating, drinking, appointments, etc.) would be important, according to the caregivers.

Following this, we thought of two solutions. The first being a connected watch / bracelet that would display daily tasks as well as perform GPS tracking.The second would be a watch strap that would integrate GPS tracking. We are going to recontact the institutes in order to share our ideas with them and thus integrate their feedback. Then we will do the same with our coaches.

We wish good luck to all the students who are taking exams.
Have a nice evening and see you soon.

Dear all,

This week was really useful for us as we had an important meeting with our supervisors. At first, we were quite confident about the way we would like to take with our solution. Thanks to our supervisors’ pieces of advice, we realized that we missed a lot of different aspects of our main subject (contraceptive pill).

Moreover, we found new competitors that offer similar solutions for our problematic. Thus it was quite difficult and frustrating for us to differentiate ourselves from them.

As many problems were revealed during this meeting, we now have to work a lot to deepen our understanding of the subject.

Here are a few tips that will definitely help us to stay on the track and imagine a good solution :

• “How might we” is the key question. It is the main reason that drives us to help people.
• We can differentiate our solution in many ways, and not only just about features or design (positioning, customization, and so on).
• We need to collect a huge amount of data during the ideation stage in order to avoid future failure. This is a game-changing activity.

Research is going to be the major activity for the next weeks. We already did a quantitative survey with more than 175 answers, which helped us a lot. We look forward to developing another one and to meet the field’s experts like gynecologists.

Hi guys,
Strong start of 2020 for the team! During our last meeting, the team spent several hours talking over different solutions and designs. We ended up with the most suitable and challenging solution that we are going to present this Wednesday.
Have a nice evening and a great week!

Hi everyone,

Hope all of you have enjoyed a great Christmas break ! For our team, it was the perfect time for each of us to think about various solutions.

We have a meeting scheduled on Wednesday to put all our ideas together and make a first selection. After having made a number of conference calls, this real-life first 2020 meeting promises to be very interesting.

Have a great week everyone and see you next Sunday!

Hi everybody,

Now that Christmas is over, our team has returned to work.

After long discussions we finally made a choice. We decide to take our opportunity about contraceptive pill in order to facilitate women's life.

To continue, we looked for more information on the subject and started to design our solutions. We shared a survey on social networks to better target our audience.

With a little advance, Lucie et ces garçon wish you a happy new year.

Hello everyone!

After going through the opportunity spaces research and the selection of the most interesting one, we now are in an exciting part, the solution investigation.

It’s time for us to diverge and converge again and again, not only to find great ideas but also to come with the right level of complexity. We are sure that the surveys and interviews which are planned will help for this task.

Next step, make a selection of our preferred concepts and go ahead with them!

Stay tuned, we will keep you posted of the latest developments still before the end of the year.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas to all!

Hi everybody,

Last week, the team defined the two most relevant opportunity spaces.

In order to find something new or different, we’re now digging into those opportunities to come up with what is already available on the market. There more, we’re also studying the problematics for a better understanding of what may be needed.

In the order hand the team as established and validated their contract.

Speak soon!

Dear all,

We have been busy this week as we had two important steps.

First, as said in our previous post, the team met on Monday to talk about the best opportunities to choose. We first put the less innovative opportunities aside and voted to select the 2 most interesting opportunity spaces.

We then presented our two problematics to our supervisors on Wednesday. The meeting was really interesting as they challenged the team with relevant thoughts and suggested alternative ideas to explore. As a result, we have now two very interesting problematics to go into in-depth:
How might we help people with Alzheimer’s to be more independent?
How might we facilitate the life of a woman taking the contraceptive pill?

Now that we have our two opportunity spaces, we will have to make a lot of in-depth researches to come up with relevant and achievable solutions for the next major step.

In the next week post’s we will probably share with you the state of our researches.

In the meantime, have a good week!

Hi everyone,

As said in the last week’s post, the group met wednesday. First to meet Christophe but also to present opportunities we found.

This discussion was very productive. Each member having presented many opportunities. We are now on a deepening phase to keep the best.

Next step for the group is to meet on monday to discuss and choose the two opportunities that we will present at the meeting with our supervisors. This meeting will take part wendesday.

In next week’s post, we will normally be able to present our two selected opportunities.

Have a good week and see you soon !

Hi everyone,

We are happy to inform you that our team is officially created and composed of 6 amazing and motivated people. The kick off weekend was a good opportunity to meet each other for a first time, we had a great pleasure being working together on this first and exciting exercice.

Our team is composed of 5 people from HEIG-VD and one person from the ECAL who will be in charge of the industrial design part. Nevertheless, we are still missing one person of our group. Actually, he is studying in Canada until the end of december and plan to be back in Switzerland for the end of this year. We planned to have our first skype call with him next Wednesday night. We are already exciting about meeting him for the first time, even more when we know it is going to be through an uncommon way.

Next wednesday night will not only be the night of meeting the last person of our group, but also an important moment where decisions will have to be made in order to answer the first Milestone.

Amazing week to all you guys