EYE-D Project: Zypad Ring Scanner

Although my focus is 100% Mbarc I still do external projects in design & innovation. A designer is a designer and once in a while creating something 3D is just really great work.

This is a design project done for Italian Company Eurotech SPA. Roughly a year ago, march 2007, I have been approached to design a ring scanner to extend the Zypad Wearable Computer range with a 1D and 2D ring scanner to scan barcodes in warehouses and still be able to use both hands to write, interact with wearable computer and carry boxes with 2 hands.



Eurotech is a leading international group, with headquarters in Italy and facilities in Europe, USA and China. Eurotech has a strong focus on research and development, and the Group implements cutting-edge technologies to improve daily life, making it simpler, safer and more comfortable.

Although I have designed more then 10 scanners including handhelds this project was a real challenge because ergonomics and usability are on a very high level. I approached this project very hands-on making simple models and observe others using it. In 10 to 15 models I evoluted the ergonomics slowly also integrating design and functional details. The Zypad Ring scanner's exteriour design was put in Rhino by me and with several technical detail sketches the engineering and tooling is done in Taiwan with a great project manager locally in Taipei. The first version of the Zypad Ring Scanner is launched end of November 2007 with 1D barcode reading capabilities.

Here the product in action.

Technology changes rapidly but do people change?

The titel of this blog is basically what has driven me for years and undaubtly will drive me the rest of my life.

To make a long story short, I believe that human behaviour is more predictable and stable then innovative technology. In this Blog I will walk through 2 very popular innovative technologies and services to prove my claim.

Social Networking.
The most popular online service of the past year is social networking. Curious as I am I signed up and experienced Facebook, Linkedin and Hyves trying to understand why this is so popular. After the initial enthousiastm I sort of did not see the point and switched from doing it into observing it. Slowly I sort of starting to realise that social networking is all about showing off. Showing off is something as old as human behaviour. For instance in the 70-s we bought a Puch and put a lot of money and time in making it look better, ride harder, bling-bling, etc. to show off to your friends and make a good impression on the girls (or boys).....

So what has changed? Now you put a lot of effort in managing your social network to show off... How much friends do you have? I see people having a daily workload managing their online image of their physical selves to stand out of the crowd and show off... nothing changed really.

SMS.
Since 3500 years BC we started to communicate in signes like Hieroglyphs and later written communication was invented. Since writing and reading is taught to the masses written communication has become a very important means of communication. In the begin of the 20th century we wrote letters, later we typed on type machines and with the introduction of the Personal Computer e-mail was introduced. In the late 80-s SMS was invented by mistake and nowadays it is the driver for mobile communication and predicted to surpass 3.7 trillion messages in 2012 (Portio Research, 2007). Communication stays communication, the carier changes from stone to paper, from paper to digits, from wired digits to wireless digits so nothing changed really. I compare SMS to wireless Post It's very suitable for communication on the go.



Actually I want to prove that the mechanism of human behaviour is not changing but the way we do it does change. Showing off within social networks actually is easyer, you can mislead people by being very well into all the gadgets or have a lot of time on your hands so you see that Social Networking's next trend will turn into Exclusive Social Networks or as you like just go out and meet and talk to people (something I actually prefer). In this communication era we are overwhelmed by communication that its effectiveness will be under pressure in the comming years. The end of SMS, e-mail, TV or the Web? Don't think so but we surely will see that communication technically will be filtered to your preferences and get more effective again. In this and other fields of the always changing relation between human behaviour and new innovative technology you will find me.

Afterthought. On Hyves I actually got in touch with my old classmates and found out you actually can turn a social network into an online community. Online Communities actually are very effective and only become this when community members starting to build something offline too (or had something offline).