GPods is the second complete team design case that I participated in at my former employer. The project has been developed for nearly one and a half years, during which many industrial designers participated in the co-creation. Thanks to the platform provided by the former owner and the joint efforts of the small partners ~ (the product map is not the final form, subject to the effect of the sale)
HHOGene is an innovative brand owned by HHO. The starting point of the brand comes from the ability of "light" to learn to use fire to control light. From the simple lighting of light to the transmission of information to create atmosphere; From a small chip, it can carry hundreds of thousands of kinds of light. Human beings have never stopped exploring the infinite future... We pay tribute to the development of light technology and digital information, focusing on the perception and discovery of life, and growing curiosity and imagination in the future. Taking "light" as the experience window of products, we will explore the way of product interaction experience in the future, and through continuous research on the digital ability of light, we will create scientific and technological, interesting and human-like intelligent hardware products with emotional design.

design origin]
The initial starting point is actually "light", from natural light to the ability of human beings to master fire; from simple lighting to transmitting information, expressing emotions, and creating an atmosphere.... The ability of human beings to control light is constantly evolving, and the energy conversion from electricity to light can reach 99%, which represents the growth of human beings in scientific and technological power, and it is also a very interesting thing!
Then we found that the Bluetooth headset market is a very large market, although the competitors are very many competitors are also very strong, but also accompanied by entering the mature market stage, product homogeneity, lack of personality, a little boring!
If the Bluetooth headset can still emit light, let the fixed headset shape break the conventional restrictions, be free from restrictions, and change patterns every day! Wow, we think this is a bit cool! At the same time, "Bluetooth Headset" also meets the energy/communication/control unit we need for digital light control, so we have started an interesting exploration...

Difficulty of man-machine]
A product breakthrough also means greater challenges. This seemingly small earphone involves a variety of complex structures such as acoustics, optics, touch control, etc. A little change in appearance means a re-scattered combination of thousands of internal parts. What's more, we have also superimposed light control chips inside!
In order to balance the man-machine wearing experience and hardware stacking, we made several rounds of 3D model proofing before and after, from 1-2-3 degree oblique angle, from 1mm-2mm-3mm detail polishing, we made seven or eight samples one by one for testing, through the actual user's wearing experience test, at this point, we found that everyone's cochlea size depth and ear structure are not quite consistent, different users will have different feedback opinions, so we need to make many adjustments and modifications on the product to meet the needs of different users, and also urge us to continuously improve the human-machine comfort.

Difficulty of light effect]
In order to realize our expression in the light effect, we are faced with many difficulties. First, the internal space of the earphone is very limited, and the light control chip needs to be integrated in the limited space. The second is uniform light. The selection of light guide material and the distance between the lamp bead and the light guide material all affect the uniform light effect. The third is the actual color matching of LED lamp beads. The RGB color value of lamp beads is very different from the actual color value of lamp beads. In order to realize the matching between APP and actual lamp beads, we need to make corresponding colors one by one for dimming, and finally complete the APP development and color realization of photographing color and custom color wheel.

[Four-wheel hand plate proofing, constantly looking for the best luminous solution]]
After many tests on the light effect prototype, we determined to use 6 Mini LED lamp beads to achieve the headphone luminous effect. This brings two problems. One is that the luminous effect is greatly affected by the uniform light, and it is difficult for the materials on the market to achieve the desired effect. In the process, we tested pp, pc,abs and other materials, as well as a variety of surface treatment methods, and finally selected ABS PC milky white semi-permeable material, surface fine etching uniform light scheme. Because the LED lamp bead is covered by two layers of materials, the final color is different from its original color value. In order to realize the custom function of earphone color in the software, we have corrected the color artificially again, and proofread thousands of corresponding color values to ensure that the earphone is colorless. The second problem is that the placement position of the conventional earphone antenna coincides with the light emitting position of the earphone, and the earphone antenna is usually placed on the handle and distributed in a strip shape.
In order to keep the light effect transparent and free of dark parts, GPods have carved LAP custom antennas on the bottom of the homogenizer. Keep the light effect transparent and 25m see-saw continuous connection.

[PVT multi-round user experience test to ensure mass production quality]]
We mobilized all members of the company to test the headphones before mass production, and worked with the product manager to develop a series of acceptance criteria from software to hardware, and conducted practical simulation tests on several common scenarios of headphones, such as commuting scenes, office scenes, sports scenes, etc. A corresponding product experience journey diagram is developed for each scenario, which is split into each functional operation in detail. Through two weeks of user experience, we will summarize and locate the collected problems and feed them back to the production line. Adjust the product in time for the core touch sensitivity and the uniform light problem of the earphone with the size of the ear cap.

[After-sales problem tracking, exploring the next generation of product optimization direction]]
After the product goes on the market, we track and locate the after-sales problems and solve the user problems in time. Through the analysis and summary of the voices of nearly 200 buyers, we optimized the core pain points such as difficult tearing of earphone packaging and sealing, easy falling of earphone wearing, and large volume of earphone warehouse into the design of next generation products in time.