In light of the recent layoff of Nike FuelBand hardware engineers, a friend pointed us to this recent post from Whipsaw, who did the FuelBand’s industrial mechanical design. It’s a good refresher course in how hard it is to design good hardware — especially when the specifications and timeframe are as demanding as the FuelBand’s were.
Here in 2014, it’s a little hard to remember how revolutionary the FuelBand was in 2012. Read this and remember.
Update: a correspondent corrects us, saying that although Whipsaw did the mechanical design for the FuelBand, its industrial design was done by Astro Studios, which won the prestigious IDEA Best in Show 2012 award for its work.