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Hardware Weekly | Vol 96

The week’s top hardware news. March 4th, 2016. Products Kiddie STEM Kit If these are the toys children play with these days, can’t help but wonder what rockets they’ll be building by 7th grade. Take $100 Tio, a STEM kit available on Kickstarter, that features loose tech parts (wheels, pulleys, adaptors) to encourage mini makers […]

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Hardware Weekly | Vol 95

The week’s top hardware news. February 26th, 2016 Products The Planet is Your Playground If the thought of laser tag still gets you excited (we know it does; us, too!), then you’ll probably sense the potential of this $18 gadget that can turn your surroundings into an Augmented Reality first person shooter game. Just think […]

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Hardware Weekly | Vol 94

The week’s top hardware news. February 19th, 2016 Products Music You Can Swallow Audiopill is an experimental device for enjoying music, one that you need to, well, swallow. “It will make you feel like you are standing in the middle of a concert hall with a powerful audio system inside your body,” so says conceptual artist […]

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Creators, Builders, and Producers: The New Maker Economy

In the summer of 2010, I traveled to Huntsville, Alabama, to attend a festival at a community workshop called Makers Local 256. A rag-tag group of engineers, artists, hackers, and community leaders from across the country—we all came as representatives from some of the earliest hackerspaces and makerspaces in the U.S., excited to talk about […]

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Hardware Weekly | Vol 93

The week’s top hardware news. February 12th, 2016 Products The Vibrator That Knows You A team of techies from companies like Google X and Amazon Lab126 are pushing the boundaries of sex research to create Lionness, a smart vibrator that uses sensors to learn your pleasure triggers. The more you use it, the more personal […]

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How to Practice Creativity: Tools to Kickstart Your Imagination

Many people think creativity is innate, but in my experience, creativity is something you have to practice every day. In 2012, my team at Toyota was challenged to create a new user experience with the infotainment system in the car (also known as “the thing in the middle of the dashboard”). Customers had been interacting […]

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Hardware Weekly | Vol 92

The week’s top hardware news. February 5th, 2016 Products TAPP Fingerprint Padlock There are so many online tutorials on how to pick a padlock that someone had to come up with a better solution for securing stuff. It comes in the form of a $29 seamless padlock called TAPP that unlocks when touched with a […]

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Hardware Weekly | Vol 91

The week’s top hardware news. January 27th, 2016. Products Like FitBit for Food This product is for those cooks who can take advice in their own kitchen. It’s the “world’s first smart cooking pan,” the $200 SmartyPans. What can it do? It measures weight, temperature and ingredients, integrates with nutrition and fitness apps and guides […]

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5 Essential Tips for User Testing Your Hardware Project

Most hardware-focused startups have only one chance to build a product that users will value, enjoy using, and adopt into their lives. If a user has difficulty using a new device or isn’t able to seamlessly integrate it into her life, chances are it will end up in the home ‘electronics graveyard’, banished to the closet or basement to […]

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The Core Principles for Building an MVP

If you’re developing a product, you’ve probably come across the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach, which seeks to create a product with the highest return on investment and the lowest risk. The idea was popularized in Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup. Ries focuses on software development for startups, but many of the principles can be […]