speaker-0 (00:05.582)
Welcome to the Heart Tech Podcast.

speaker-1 (00:09.4)
And everybody, welcome back to the Hard Tech Podcast. I'm your host, DeAndre Herakus, with my usual suspect, Grant Chapman. Yeah, super excited. We've got a box full of goodies, everyone, from none other than Shafe Ali, the head of engineering at OSNAP. Welcome to the show. Yeah, Grant. So you walked in this morning to the office, and we've got an entire box full of, I think like you it was like your dream box.

speaker-2 (00:14.837)
Super excited to be here today.

speaker-0 (00:26.614)
Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

speaker-2 (00:34.626)
This is my dream box. So just for everyone listening, this is the first episode where I will fully fangirl for most of the time. so I will I will give a quick intro on why I'm excited. So Mcon is a idea that was had because someone wanted to play video games on their phone better. And I am an avid video game player and I always thought that the supercomputer in my pocket should be more useful for video for video games, but I've never played video games on my phone.

Why is this the case? And I saw a YouTube video of someone who is three printing this controller that like stuck to your phone and like was supposed to be good for this. And I messaged him and never heard back, but followed his journey for the next couple of years. And then what was it like maybe five, six weeks ago, Shafe, I got to meet you on a call not knowing that O snap partnered up to actually bring the MCON to market. So Shafe, can you introduce yourself and what you guys make?

speaker-0 (01:24.75)
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I'm I'm at OSAP, head of engineering. we're based in North Carolina and MCon itself, so it was a idea from from Josh. He made this awesome video talking about the potential that you know our mobile phones have for gaming. and it was at a point where it's kind of this really strong concept, a lot of people are excited, but it needs to become a product. So he comes to OSANAP.

And you know, I joined only a few months before that. And my background and experience is design engineering. So this combination of mechanical, software, electrical, and it just so happens that this was an electromechanical product. And I had been playing mobile games for at that point, maybe nine years, and gaming even before that on, you know, whatever the Wii, Xbox and and whatnot. So it was

It was almost kind of like serendipity of all these things coming together. And I guess last year I spent eight months in China to make it a reality, going from essentially this concept to product on the shelf. where it typically takes two to three years, but we managed to do it in in a couple of months. And yeah, we're a small team. It's like four, four, five people who are working on it. and you know, Dale, who's CEO

also major gamer had a lot in in that experience and feel for what MCON should be and then Dave who pretty much did all the CAD for it. So yeah, I guess everything else is what I was handling when it came to when it came to you know analysis of the mechanisms, the manufacture, the electronic spec, the firmware spec, just everything that, you know, people don't necessarily see.

So yeah, that's kind of that's the short version of of Mcon and kind of background voice.

speaker-2 (03:27.988)
Awesome. And I and I think it's such a amazing project to get jumped in on because this is not only electromechanical, right? You have an enclosure, it has to do things, this has mechanisms and springs and magnets and truly like all the realm of mechanical engineering, other than it doesn't cool your palms and and serve you a drink. But it is a

speaker-0 (03:48.204)
pass our mind. It wouldn't pass our mind to do that.

speaker-2 (03:50.894)
It's awesome. But yeah, but it's it's crazy complex and it's a product that you actually handle. Right. Like a nest thermostat has to look beautiful, but you touch it once the day you set it up. Right. The purpose of a nest thermostat is never to be touched again. This product literally lives on your person, in your pocket, on your phone, and the whole time you're using it, it is gotta feel perfect. So your mechanical engineering has gotta be just spot on, every single part of it. And that has gotta had to have been th one of the hardest parts to get right. 'Cause I bet you got it eighty five percent of the way there.

pretty early. And I bet you that last center fifteen percent was just absolutely hard.

speaker-0 (04:25.706)
It was it was a pain for sure. I think that's that's one thing which we're pretty passionate about. you know, we started off as a Kickstarter and we had kind of this initial design and we were like, Okay, we're gonna take this and manufacture it and we, you know, showed it off at CES. But as we got further in, we kinda noticed that there were issues of like, you know, this thing is is good but it's not great. Like it's not what it's meant to be.

And that's where we kind of had to take a step back and improve things because we're not gonna launch something that we're not proud of. Like that we truly think this is something that someone's gonna use every day. If we're kind of meandering around it and just kind of not caring as much, then it just that doesn't make for a good product because if you don't care about the experience, why on earth are your users gonna care about it? So yeah, we we ended up having

A lot of issues with the with the launching mechanism. And that's really where we had to well, I ended up downloading this, purchasing this German s engineering software that's used by NASA for kind of doing different spring simulations. So we we really went into a lot of detail because as you said, this thing is on someone essentially all day. it gets kind of beaten up in their in their backpacks like

Gamers are not the most friendly with their controllers, I'll tell you that much. In anger, I mean I haven't done it, but I've seen people throw controllers against the wall because they like conceded a goal on FIFA or something. So all of those things had to be taken into account. And what what's really interesting is that this also has a dynamic mechanism with inside it. So that's basically a constant force spring that's coiled up, and then when you press it.

speaker-2 (06:20.63)
We have we have YouTube for everyone watching. They can come watch this.

speaker-0 (06:23.618)
So you know, there's there's a lot of different mechanisms, but to the user, it's like, you just put it in and you close it and it's done. But this action is a combination of three different springs, which you wouldn't even know. I guess on the transparent one, you know, you you can see that there's this central spring over here. and you can kind of see the constant full spring as it unwinds. and Dave put a really fun Easter egg. If you can see this button right here. Yeah.

When you press it, it's essentially the release mechanism, but it looks like a spaceman. And those bar that bar right there clearly unnecessary. We just added that because Dave wanted the spaceman to have arms.

speaker-2 (07:06.338)
That is amazing.

speaker-0 (07:09.304)
So there's a bunch of little Easter eggs like that, which again you have to care immensely about what you're doing to to put those in and at the end the user will not notice. But

speaker-2 (07:22.082)
The user will notice if they're not there. They won't notice that the things are there. They'll notice when they're missing.

speaker-0 (07:26.758)
Precisely. They will appreciate it without even knowing. Like even like your iPhone, right? Why when someone gets an iPhone do they like it from like a design perspective? Like they're it's nice to hold or whatever. It's like they don't go, I love the radius on this thing. No, they just like it. And they can't explain why. And the reason is because there was a team of mathematicians and engineers who meticulously drew out the the squirkle, the shape of their special radius.

to to have it be that way. So it's all intentional and it's all driven from a place of, you know, this is how it's supposed to be, which no amount of, you know, user testing or kind of gathering data and insights will tell you. It's just it's kind of a a taste thing.

speaker-1 (08:15.694)
Shafe, one of the things I was most excited about when it came when it came to the pod in our conversation was of all the engineers and product leaders we've met with on the show, you're by far like probably number one in terms of most talented engineers I've had a conversation with. And I feel like one of those reasons is because you are such a self-starter and self-learner. for those who didn't hear our conversation before the podcast even kicked off, I hear you said that you figured out how to do a PCB in two days. I that's that's pretty fast, right? In terms of learning and velocity. and I feel like that goes back to your your childhood.

right when you got started in engineering like you were eleven or twelve and you watched total recall and you literally made a device like tell me about that story and and I'll with that go into your background a little bit on what got you into the world of engineering in the first place.

speaker-0 (08:59.896)
For sure, yeah. I guess going back way back, it's pretty much total recall, sci-fi film, sat down watching it, and there was this scene that came up where one of the characters pulls out their hand and then just starts talking into it and communicating, and they had this entire interface built into their hand. And you know, I was sat down watching the movie and

Any in any other scenario you just continue watching the movie. But you know, I was a weird twelve year old and I looked at that and I was like, Why is that not real? So I I literally left and went and started researching like what's out there. Like is there anything that's like a glove or something which which allows you to do that? And there was like a couple of things where it was, you know, very I guess simple devices with like a microphone and and a speaker, but it wasn't really it was very bulky.

And I I kind of looked at that and went, I think I can make it better. So I again I think this is one of the reasons why I end up being resourceful today is because of what I was doing back then, is I didn't have a lot of resources. Like like my family immigrated to the UK and I, you know, grew up my whole life in the UK, but we didn't really start off with a lot. So that meant

You know, there's no engineering background within my family. Don't have a lot of resources. So you're forced to be creative and figure things out. So I basically found this old Bluetooth headset and disassembled it and rewired it to put a microphone in the pinky speaker in the thumb. And then just like you'd pretend to take a call as a kid, it would actually work. And you could basically talk to your talk to your phone but with your hand and it was recreating that kind of total recall scene.

I took that further and started to integrate conductive thread and conductive touchpads because I had this idea of, you know, how can we access our phone without ever touching it? And that's when I started having these touch controls that I implemented, essentially what the Apple Vision Pro does today, but this was back in like twenty twelve.

speaker-1 (11:15.256)
Right, and you're twelve.

speaker-0 (11:17.004)
Yeah, yeah, that so that kind of made me think, you know, a lot of the time people will lead with technology and they'll be like, there's this cool tech, we need to make the tech you know. Right. But a lot of the time people forget about the story and the why. Like what does this do? Like why what why do I want it? Like if I tell someone, this has five hundred X compute, it's like

speaker-2 (11:30.444)
Make a thing with the tech in it. Yeah.

speaker-0 (11:46.112)
Most people won't don't care. Unless you're like a super power user who cares about that specific metric, it's more about the experience and the why. That's why stuff like you mentioned the Nest Thermostat earlier. That's why that did extremely well. because it was all derived from from experience. and I guess when it came to the Bluetooth glove, it started off with the story of I want to recreate this thing from Total Recall. Then it went to

It's cold outside, I want to use my phone, but I wanna, you know, not take it out of my pocket and risk dropping it or have bulky gloves. I want a much lighter weight glove. And then it it went to a story which was much more relevant because at the time there was a lot of phone snatchings happening on mopeds. And this was in London in particular. And the thing pivoted to more of a security and I guess experience.

Wearable where you want to stay connected. Your phone does so many useful things, but you also don't want to have it in the open where a moped can pull up to you and snatch it out of your hands. So that's where it ended up going into that kind of direction. And yeah, it was it was honestly, I think the thing which made me, you know, believe in not just wanting to do engineering, but wanting to do it.

well from a user experience perspective. I think the best term is ubiquitous computing, where things will just blend in and technology serves the people, not the other way around.

speaker-2 (13:25.59)
Well, I think it's it's the that axiom between technology and design, right? There are plenty of products that only exist because they knew someone invented a new technology that did something in and of itself, right? The the advent of that tech was useful. Like think about Bluetooth, right? The first wireless headsets were just practical. I didn't want a wire. The whole purpose of buying that product was that it didn't have a wire. And now look today. Every set of headphones is wireless. And the question is

Which headphones sounds the best? Was it what what it was for a long time? Now there's a ton of really good sounding headphones and my hearing's too bad to care. Now it's which headphones do I enjoy using? Does the user interface feel nice of knowing that it's charged and that does it fit my pocket from AirPods or is it comfortable over my ears, my over your headphones? And I I own three different pairs of sleep headphones because I keep trying different ones with different designs. They're the same purpose, they're built with the same function. Two of them are from the same company, just iterations, and it's that experience of, I update.

appreciate they did this small detail that makes it so much slightly better that makes you always default to that one. And that's design over just technology and function.

speaker-0 (14:32.062)
Exactly. Yeah, it's that that element of caring about it. And, you know, at twelve it's like I could care about nothing or I could care about things which are completely, you know, irrelevant to making things or engineering and design or whatever. But the reason why I was able to build that wearable and take it, you know, further

was because I cared about it. And I think that's all all it comes down to is being passionate and caring. Cause, you know, if if you're able to empathize with your users, then they will just know. They like it's it's it's it's a difficult thing to try and articulate to users as like a process, but they will just feel it when they use it because they're like, that's neat. Like that that little tiny thing that they did where

You know, a great example of that might be when you're doing a volume dial and maybe in this particular scenario, fifty percent is what people set it most to, and there's a nice little click at fifty.

speaker-2 (15:37.292)
Yep. A notch. Like this this is where the middle is.

speaker-0 (15:40.48)
Exactly. Because that person has been in that scenario, has tried it and experienced it. has experienced it. One one cool case study I I like, which I learned at university was there was basically like Nokia was trying to design a phone for firefighters. So these engineers and designers at Nokia literally trained as firefighters, I think it was

It's either two months or two years. It was something crazy where they literally put themselves as firefighters to essentially have this, I guess, immersion approach to design so that they could really empathize and figure out like what is the best user experience. and I guess they became like actual qualified firefighters and they also made a phone for firefighters.

speaker-2 (16:32.798)
So cool. And I I wish that more engineers knew this, right? All product designers do get this. I wish more engineers got exposed to this like earlier in college. Because in college you just learn about design and math and like or I say design, like how to like engineer something to work for a function. But I wish that more engineering schools pushed design and the user-centered design process. Because even if your user is cars driving over a bridge, there's still a user. There's still experience. Everything exists to be experienced.

Right.

speaker-0 (17:03.522)
Yeah, and and it's also there's this idea that the experience is just in the product itself, but that's not true. When a customer approaches it, they will approach the lo the the checkout page, or let me go even before that, they'll approach the product or before it then the product page, then the checkout page, then they'll do you know, it'll arrive and the shipping process, that in of itself, then it's like, Okay, we're using the product.

speaker-2 (17:20.189)
The advertisement.

speaker-0 (17:33.238)
Now what about when you want to do FAQs or help with the product and then the post product support? What if it breaks? is there continued support? Just all those things are what the product actually is. But you're right, a lot of the time I think engineers get very focused and even I guess designers, like industrial designers to a certain extent, hone in way too hard on the product as the only thing that's part of the experience.

I guess my background is design engineering and that was at Imperial and what I liked about that was their approach to the course was make something that solves a user problem user's problem. We'll teach you engineering stuff to help you do it.

speaker-1 (18:18.624)
Right.

speaker-2 (18:19.148)
It's the necessary evil.

speaker-0 (18:20.81)
Exactly. And it was it was great. So yeah, it's I think it's important.

speaker-1 (18:25.144)
It's one of those things that's so

You don't notice it until you do, but of like the best product leaders are just very like I wanna say like scrutinists, like they're so demanding to make sure that experience is great. I mean, Steve Jobs was the pinnacle version of this, right? Of just y yelling at his team that it had to be better. Like it ha they ha it has to be, you know, this much better. Down to like you mentioned like with the springs. And you kinda inched into my camp a little bit of like, I agree. I think that product is far outside just the engineering or

the the lines of code. It's that full user experience. I mean, I tend to look at go to market and like the marketing and the sales process or go to market for a company is also the

speaker-2 (19:07.278)
Product. It's the sample. The the sale is the sample, Blair Ends. Yep.

speaker-1 (19:10.466)
Exactly, right? So it's this full holistic approach with like an obsession that we want the user to enjoy every facet of what it means to engage with our company or our brand or obviously ultimately the product and how they experience it. And that's how you start to create those, you know, differentiated companies that grow way bigger and customers love them and you kind of become that brand name. but I think it comes back to that piece of, you know, great design is invisible, but in so many different ways. so Shafi, just to kinda like double click in that a little bit more.

Just so you can maybe articulate it in a nice bow, so we'll have a good clip for the internet. Like when you say good design is invisible, what do you mean?

speaker-0 (19:49.186)
Good Design as Invisible is essentially referring to the user doesn't notice what you've done because it's been done so well that it just blends into their everyday life. So it was I guess before when I talked about ubiquitous computing, that's a good example of it in the software space. when it comes to you know the the hardware space.

Then things things change a little bit because there's that phrase where people say, you know, you've got to be obsessed with the details. And that is absolutely critical, but there is a part of that phrase which I think is often missing, which is you've got to be obsessed with the details that matter. So an example of that is when you care about the user experience, then you know when you're designing your packaging and

your font is one pixel off and you're like, this has to be right. There's there's no way we can ship without this. But at the same time, your volume dial is making a weird sound every time you use it and it kind of crunches and then it it doesn't feel right. That is something the user will be interacting with every single day. And that is the detail you should be obsessed with and spending your time and pouring over and you know shouting at, you know, whatever

manufacturing team that that needs to work to make that thing correct and the way it's designed to be. I think that is when

you have that idea of of good design disappearing. when people don't say anything other than the product's awesome and that it's good. And they don't point out point out its flaws. It just kinda speaks for itself. I think a good example of that is, you know, at OSNAP we have this grip that Dale and the team designed I'll

speaker-2 (21:56.777)
I might have one in the box in front of me.

speaker-0 (21:58.752)
Yeah. So the O snap grip, right, it's literally only two point five millimeters thick and you can pop it out and it's got this compliant mechanism and you can put your fingers through, rotates three sixty, has nubs, so you can have it as a stand. And we also have I don't have the magnet paper with me right now, but essentially there's a combination of different magnetizations within the MagSafe ring, which means that when you take it off a grip,

sorry, when you take it off a stand, it doesn't pull the grip off with it, which you know that's such a minor thing, but it's the difference between someone hating your product and loving your product. So I think that's where it shows up. It shows up in the reviews.

speaker-2 (22:46.678)
Well and I I think that the interesting part of what you said is like don't waste time on the little things that they touch once. I think there's this math formula that is something along the lines of everything has to be at least X level of good. And once you're past X, i now we're now there's devil in the details, but you ha everything has to be to a certain level. If the packaging and the font looks so bad that it looks cheap, no one will buy it. Right? On the shelf, no one's gonna buy it. But once you're at certain level

the you know the pixel being off one or two pixels or the color from run to run not being a hundred percent your brand color to being slightly off, you'll probably survive. But then after that point, as long as everything's up to that minimum level, now it's integration of area under the curve. How how high is all of the parts of the experience that you catch these little moments of joy? Right. I I think this is the obsession. And the question I've got for you is how does someone learn to have that attention to de to detail?

Because this is the thing I struggle to teach my team and especially our younger engineers at a college, is they'll go, Well, how do you see that? How did you know from across the room that that snap pit was too tight? I'm like, I heard it. I f I heard that snap and that was way too tight. how do you how do you know that? I don't know how to tell you, but it's you know, experience is how I've said it. And it that, you know, you need your ten thousand hours and you'll start building it. And every ten thousand hours you add on top of your first, you get

more, you know, binoculars to zoom in on these crazy tiny details that do just feel wonderful when you get right. But how how have you described that process of having the right attention to detail and blending what you said earlier, tastemaking with attention to t to detail?

speaker-1 (24:26.156)
I I guess the last piece to add to that is the right detail. Right.

speaker-0 (24:29.422)
Yeah. I think it comes back to twelve year old me of do you care? Like is it something which you are truly passionate about and oftentimes that comes tied with a story or an experience or a personal pain point which you which you've had and if you believe in whatever you're you're you're making then

You're not gonna want other people to have that pain point. Like if you hear that Snapfit breaking, right? And you're like, okay, well, we need to fix that. It's in my opinion, it's not necessarily experience which is dictating that. It's the care and passion. And paying attention to those details. The reason for that is because of the care and passion. The experience element to me is an accelerator, it's a catalyst. So

You might think, this thing feels really, you know, top heavy. And the experience element, what that is great for is quickly identifying which part of that is the root cause and and reason for it. But that's never gonna replace speaking up about it and and saying, no, this thing isn't perfect. We have to redo it. So yeah, I th I think it's it's a it's a complex thing and in terms of it being taught,

I think it's like you you can't what's what's the phrase? You can't lead a horse to water or whatever. That's it. Yeah, you can't lead a horse to water, you can't make a drink.

speaker-1 (26:08.152)
I can't help but just have these like athlete coach analogies going through my head as you're saying that. Right? Just like you have to want it. Like it's basically i and that is not coachable, but when you say it, I understand what you mean. Yeah. You basically have to be willing to go through whatever

I you got it to the point where it was ready. Yep. But it was making the weird sound. It would cause you a certain certain amount of pain to make it that much better. And unless you care, you don't make it that much better. And that's the difference. Right? You have to be willing to go through pain for the user, basic like you have to be so obsessed that you're willing to put yourself through more work in an effort to deliver that to be better.

speaker-0 (26:47.714)
Hundred percent. Yeah, I think I think th all that mindset applies to, you know, entrepreneurship, design, engineering, sports, like all of it is like to have something that ends up being successful, you have to have that obsession. And sometimes it it just can't be it can't be taught. And that's not to say that someone isn't capable of it. It's just that they're doing the wrong thing. They're not necessarily

spending their time on the thing which they would be obsessed with. Again, it varies from person to person, I think. for me, I get into this deep kind of zone of of hyper focus. And, you know, for MCon to do the the delivery within nine months, you know, I was spending twenty four to thirty-six hours straight at the factory, during, you know, P V T builds, etcetera,

Just because the button felt wrong. Like I remember there was one of the one of the button membranes, it wasn't feeling correct. And we just we we had to ship, but we also needed to resolve this thing. So I ended up being driven out to this factory at three AM and we were there sat measuring click ratios of buttons and these little tiny silicon membranes.

Just trying to refine this one detail. And it's like, it would have been good enough to ship, but I'm just like, I know it's wrong. I know, like, I know every single thing that's wrong with this product, because no product will ever reach a point of perfection. That's one thing when I was at Dyson that I was taught was no design will ever be perfect. And that obsession to make it perfect is it's not a constant thing. It it varies. Sometimes you'll have days where you're like,

like it's good enough, but for the for the right product that obsession can can withstand. And for me, the thing which with the thing which I had to fight against was I remember it was during Golden Week, which it or just before Golden Week, which is basically a holiday in in China, we had to ship these units out and we were working right up against the clock, and I ended up

speaker-0 (29:11.584)
just before having to go to hospital because I was just so deep in in grinding and luckily I don't know what magic pills they gave me, but I was back up on my feet in like two days. But it's just that relentless drive of, you know, there's limiting factors for for different people, but ultimately you've got to want it in order for for it to become reality.

speaker-2 (29:35.534)
Right. And it it's this this healthy balance between or maybe unhealthy, but balance between obsession and reality. Right. Yeah. I'm going to be obsessed with bringing this as close to perfection as possible. And then at some time you gotta shoot the engineers and ship the products, the users can go experience it in whatever state that it's in. Right. Yeah and we all have to remember like the first iPhone had no app store. Like this is I I say this all the time, it's a broken record, but like that fact still blows my mind.

'Cause no one remembers that the first iPhone didn't have an app store until you say it out loud. Everyone thinks that every iPhone's been as good as the one in your pocket since the first day. But the reason iPhones feel perfect is 'cause they've literally been polished for what, almost twenty years.

speaker-0 (30:16.268)
Yes, exactly. And there's still more to do, right? There's still more to improve. And I think what ends up happening is that the technology gets better and then it can catch up to the experience. Because the experience there there's like a there's a goal for an experience and usually the limiting factor when you're coming from it from a design perspective is like, well, we can't put a battery in there physically large enough or dense enough.

speaker-2 (30:18.456)
And it's

speaker-0 (30:43.168)
Exactly, without it being like a fire hazard or not allowed to to sell, right? So technology honestly ends up becoming a limiting factor before the experience.

speaker-2 (30:53.406)
Well and then I think it leapfrogs. Then you have this moment of breakthrough technology and there's no user experience. I mean, I we're a hardware podcast, but we were talking about this earlier. I think AI is the best example of this. Yes. AI is already insanely powerful enough to do almost anything in the world. But the user experience for it is just a toddler. Claude co-work, clawed code, anthropic co or what is it, open AI's codex, all these harnesses that are where humans interact with AI.

This is like literally the first seconds of the iPhone being born. And we're gonna get this ex user experience of how that back end of the AI will interface with all the rest of our lives. Sure. In the next two years is gonna be totally different than what it is today. And that's design, not technology. Yeah. Right.

speaker-1 (31:40.226)
I think one of the things that has crossed my mind then I'll I I'm gonna sidetrack us and I'll bring us immediately back to center your voice. but I think one of the biggest barriers you find with like adopting and really leveraging these AI tools is just having enough context to where the AI can deliver the outcome that you

speaker-2 (31:54.868)
How do you tell it, yeah?

speaker-1 (31:55.842)
Yeah, how do you give it enough information to where it can come out with the outcome you want? And my solution, I guess from a product perspective, is if it always had all the context and it could always answer my questions at the rate that I would want it to. And I just envision this world where like people are coming into like glassboard, for example, and they pick up their plod pin when they punch their clock, their theoretical clock, and they put it on their human and they walk around and everything's getting recorded. And anytime they need something, it just is so as all the context of not just you, but everyone else in the organization to like fully prompt this effectively.

I think what what we might see is the prompt itself, the needing to do that is fundamentally the barrier for for getting the outputs that we want. But that is a complete side tangent.

speaker-2 (32:37.334)
I'd love that. We're gonna have to build that product.

speaker-0 (32:39.798)
I mean I what I will say is that sometimes the lack of context and this is this is coming back to you know I guess the analogy would be lack of resources would be the closest thing, but that lack of context might end up giving you an avenue you didn't even consider before. And sometimes, you know, we in our head think, I know exactly what what I want, but then

There's always this like, well, we don't have this thing in stock, we're gonna have to figure out another way to do it. And that another way to do it is actually way better. And I think that's I at the moment, the way AI is, that lack of context sometimes helps. But I do agree, it's it's a problem for when you're trying to do you know, technical execution work. But for discovery, sometimes, you know, that randomness is placed to plays to people's benefit.

speaker-2 (33:35.298)
Well, pulling this back into hardware engineering, I think this is one of the hardest balances of engineering and design in what I'm gonna call brainstorming. Brainstorming doesn't just happen at the very beginning of a product's life. This happens on the factory floor five minutes before you have to ship because you're gonna brainstorm some MacGyver fixed to a pro you know a problem really fast. And my least favorite part about how engineers brainstorm is they shoot down everyone's ideas too fast. and I am that person. I I'm only saying this because I'm in the room with us. and I am way too quick.

To judge someone's idea on technical merit when I shouldn't, and if I would grow as a person, I would listen just a little bit longer before I eviscerated them for their bad idea. Because that bad idea might spark a creative solution, just connecting two dots that didn't exist before, and then it goes real. Even if the physics are broken, some first principle's idea was never gonna work. Hearing the end of it might connect a different thing.

I think what is it? Star Trek had the sliding doors in all like the spaceship enterprise and they were done by like a person behind the scenes with a pulley and a rope in when they're filming. That made someone want to go invent sliding doors and that's how we have sliding doors in retail now. With like the motion sensors. Like this was straight from Star Trek.

speaker-0 (34:46.88)
Interesting. Yeah. No, I think I think that that's something which when I was at Samsung, so I was in the think tac team at Samsung Research and you know that's essentially just okay, what what can we come up with? And that's exactly the environment where you you absolutely cannot shoot down ideas because it's not about execution, it's about navigating ambiguity and being comfortable with essentially

being uncomfortable because you you have this kind of open void of what the future could be and there's no there's no I guess game plan written down for what that is. I I have I made this thing in in well we call it college but I think for you guys it's probably high school. it's I would have been 17 at the time okay so

speaker-2 (35:40.674)
speaker-0 (35:43.532)
We basically handmade and hand turn stuff on blades and traditional woodwork. Sure. But is one of my favorite, which is, you know, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, right? So I think when we're when we're coming up with ideas, it's as you said, it's easy to shoot down stuff because there's this element of, well, we've tried that before and it hasn't worked. Sure.

speaker-2 (35:48.93)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (36:13.282)
But yeah, when it comes to kind of having to go with this breadth first approach, you have to completely take away all assumptions and preconceptions or anything anything which would lead you to, you know, write something off. And I think that mindset is also useful on the factory floor. Like you said, five minutes before shipping. Sometimes the crazy thing where it's like, let's chop this part of the the thing off of the design that we thought would solve it and

Now it suddenly works. So yeah, I think in the design phase, it's absolutely vital that you kind of have those ideas. And and what I like about brainstorming, it was actually when I was at Samsung, the the director there had essentially had this thing where all right, let's have a brainstorming session for an hour and then at the end of it it's like, All right, so now that all the bad ideas are out, now we can

up with the real stuff. Because the real stuff often comes in those side conversations or in the shower or on a walk when you're least expecting it. So allowing yourself to be bored and explore those things which are like kinda dumb when you like when you're first approaching it. It's like, how do we I don't know solve aging? Well like what if we

Everyone runs on the earth fast enough to change its rotation slightly to slow down time. Like something completely stupid and ridiculous, right? But it's like that might lead to something which obviously I don't think in this context it would, but you know, that's that's an extreme version of it. But just like if we entertain it, is there something that can come out of it which is actually a really, really interesting idea?

speaker-1 (38:03.063)
Hmm.

speaker-2 (38:03.598)
And I think my my favorite thing to share in this one is and I forget who taught me this, but brainstorming should be structured, which sounds counterintuitive. You should have a dedicated time and maybe place for the insane ideas. Right. There is no wrong answer. Physics doesn't exist here. We don't believe in physics. We believe in magic. If you could auto magic a design or a technology to solve the problem, what would your device look like? How would it feel? What would it do?

How do you accomplish that? What what is the like in some you know, fantasy world, the orcs magic is all based on their belief in it. So if all of them believe this thing to be true, that's how their magic works. This is brainstorming. And then you have to cut it if you're gonna, you know, at a certain point and you have all the bad ideas out on the table, and then you have to switch into engineering mode, into first principles physics and and actually use the equations or math and systematically work through the ideas and find out where the physics breaks, and then

How do you shortcut that? This is my favorite, like the magic moment of this is that you, you know, creative brain and math brain, and math brain falls, f you know, falls in the sword and falls finds the problem. But then creative brain goes, but what if I peanut butter and jelly these other two ideas? So I didn't have to lose that equation battle, right? So I didn't generate that much heat. Instead of how do we cool the product, what if I just made less heat? Right. And asking the the anti question, and that's when you get innovation. That's when you solve real problems.

speaker-0 (39:28.044)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's that idea of the optimist and and the pessimist. And oftentimes the engineering side is more pessimistic than the design and creative side. And you mentioned before it's like, what if what if physics doesn't apply and and maths isn't real? Well snap, that's true all the time. That's There's like there's certain things will mold to a thickness of like naught point

speaker-1 (39:48.034)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (39:55.042)
two five millimeters where the factory's like, there's no way, you can't do that. The pressure's too high. We're like, nah, but just try it though. And then it works. And they're like, all right, well, you got lucky that time. But then that's how the product ultimately does things that other products won't or can't.

speaker-2 (40:10.638)
And and I think that's risk taking, right? I think the the beauty of what you just described is the beauty of startup, the beauty of venture capital, the beauty of small company and small business is the ship is not so large you can't afford to take a risk. You can do a thing that is i ill advised. It might not work ninety five percent of the time, but it could work sixty. And if your design falls into that sixty, you've made something the other guys won't try 'cause they're too risk adverse.

speaker-0 (40:37.74)
Yeah, and they're too slow. They they just they don't have that pace because there's so much bureaucracy and checks and all this kind of stuff and red tape where if you're you know, when I when I was in the think tank team, that was like a microcosm where that didn't apply. But as soon as you try to let it out beyond that, it's like, Okay, now everything's come to a halt and it was just super frustrating. So, you know, O snap, as you said, start up, do what you want.

speaker-1 (40:58.785)
Yep.

speaker-0 (41:07.13)
and experiment because ultimately what matters is is this a good product that we use every day and does it serve the user and solve something? I think one of the things is we're all pretty opinionated. So we will say whether we hate something or like something. And the thing is there's no there's no there's not meant to be any hurt feelings, but it's the it's a rule of best idea wins. And I think that's that's a nice thing and and that

Really depends on the team you're in.

speaker-2 (41:38.654)
Have have you heard that one before, DeAndre? Have you ever heard that exact phrase?

speaker-1 (41:42.062)
That that's the exact thing, you know, Shafe, I was talking and I'll let Grant tell the story around it, but or just how we think about that. I was having a conversation with someone two days ago and asked, you know, how's Glassboard? You enjoy? And I said, Yeah, I really enjoy it. You know, it's lot of fun. I said the thing I like I love about the most is beyond what we do, right? Beyond that, you know, glassboard, harbor engineering, et cetera, I think I said I think in especially here in like Indianapolis in the Midwest, I think it's one of the more innovative companies in the city in the Midwest, because just from a cloud

cultural perspective because it literally and I said this to a verbatim like when you bring an idea to a to a conference room anyone's idea is is valid and the moment someone picks up that idea and like someone idea loses, the other person's willing to pick up their idea and champion that idea like it was theirs in the first place and say, hey, this is the winner right here. but I'll let you dive into that. But I completely agree with you.

speaker-2 (42:34.474)
Well and it's it's it's so magic. Because what you just described is exactly what we have here at Glassboard, that no one has an ego. We put those in the trash can the day that you get hired. Like your your ego goes in the trash can. We are I think Brady put it the best. Everyone every day feels inadequate at Glassboard. Like no one feels like they're they're you know good enough to be here, but simultaneously they know that this is the place they belong. And that like you you think everyone around you is way smarter and then you realize that one day you're the person that solves someone else's problem for them because

they came to you 'cause you were the expert in your field. And that's the magic that we actually have a culture that celebrates all of us winning together to the point that we all push each other so hard and we all feel like there's no way I know I'm good enough to be here. Look at everyone how good everyone around me is. And you realize that they feel that way around you. And I think it's a culture thing. I think you guys have that. I think we've got it. and I think this is there's an a few enterprise companies that have ruthlessly kept their culture.

Right. Yes. And I think that's the thing. It's not about process. It's not about magic P N L numbers. The P and L will will w the numbers will be there if you r ruthlessly make sure your culture is good.

speaker-1 (43:44.874)
Yeah, I I guess the other piece I'll add to it as well, and you guys were talking about it a moment ago. then I've got my last question for you 'cause I know we're we're almost on time and I wanna be be be mindful of that. just around you you were talking about like whenever you're thinking about those innovative ideas, like we we we get into the conversation and we throw out all the ideas for the first hour and then we're really talking about the real ideas. And like the best ideas come in the shower. The best ideas come when you're driving home from work and you're just kinda thinking. and I think it's just like allowing yourself to think more freely and tapping into that is just like

hard to do naturally. Like as soon as you start to think about thinking, then you're thinking about it, then it's never as good. You know, it's just like it it's a non-starter once you realize it's happening. It's like it's like every time you go and like grab the hangers from your closet and every time it's the exact amount of shirts that you have on the bed. I don't know how I do it. It's you know

speaker-0 (44:23.968)
speaker-2 (44:24.31)
We all just lost the game.

speaker-0 (44:34.178)
Yeah. You get into quantum thinking. It's like whatever, the the fourth wall. You're breaking the fourth wall.

speaker-1 (44:40.524)
That's right. I guess the the last question I've got for you, and I just thoroughly enjoy this, is just advice from the person who for the person who's actually trying to ship a product, right? And ship a product quickly, just based on all your experience from twelve until now, from O snap to to Dyson to McConn. What would be your your advice for someone trying to ship a product?

speaker-0 (45:04.258)
Yeah, no, that's a good question. I think you know, I'd start by asking is what you're making truly something that people want? That's kind of where I'd start off first. and then, you know, the answer is yes. Then it's a question of do you love it and are you passionate about it? You know, are you willing to champion that thing because hardware is a struggle? Like atoms

I think that that's that's probably the the the clip you need is hardware is difficult. and atoms do not move as quickly as bits. It's getting faster, all of it's getting way faster, but you have to thoroughly be obsessed with whatever you're making in order to make that leap, especially in a startup from prototype to production product. You know, I think there's different elements of speed, execution.

quality, you know, if you had all the time in the world, then sure, right? You can you can deliver something, but oftentimes you have to make those compromises. And you know, the only way to to learn and realize, you know, this thing works once, right? If I build build this prototype, it works once and it works really well. Okay, now how are you gonna make that work twenty-five thousand times and then when you have to reorder them another twenty-five thousand times, a hundred thousand times

How do you make that experience the same every single time? And that's a whole other kind of worms where you know the ultimate way to do that, if you're if you're you know a founder or an entrepreneur, or you know, even if you're within a company and you're trying to start something new, you just have to be obsessed and innately curious with all of those things. You know, it's one example is in in

Our I think it was our E V T build, you know, you're sat there and you're twenty eight hours in and at six AM and there's a roach crawling out of the vent and you gotta ask yourself, Is this worth it? Then you probably don't love it enough. But if you just are doing it and you don't even notice the time, you don't notice the environment you're in, and you just want the product to be damn good, that is when you know you're working on the right thing.

speaker-2 (47:29.814)
Yep, it's it's you don't notice what day of the week it is or which roach is crawling on your sandwich. It's this is the spring that works. We finally got the spring that does the thing I wanted it to do. And that joy will overcrowd any other part of the grind or the struggle, right? Yeah. Of true creativity. Because I think it's one thing us nerds in hardware and true product get to share with artists. We get to make a thing the world experiences. We don't just do a thing the world needs.

speaker-0 (47:57.762)
Yes, exactly. And it's also the element of once you make that thing, you now have this really exciting moment where you've got this delayed dopamine release where when that thing launches, you're gonna be at Cloud Nine with all the feedback, but you're also gonna hit rock bottom when the negative reviews gonna be like, Man, maybe I just end it all because people hate this thing. And they point it out like,

This this handle creaks, and you're like, yeah, but like that's such a minor thing in the context of it, and it might be a one off issue, or it might be an intentional thing, which you which you did for a reason. So, one example is in the controller, you know, some people talk about the initial force being slightly higher than what they would like, and it's like, I know that's a thing.

Because the reason why it's slightly higher is because over time that friction hinge wears away and in one or two years, once you've used it five, ten thousand times or whatever, we still want it to be solid enough that, you know, if I grab my phone and I mount it, is it gonna be able to hold up the weight and do its job of supporting in not just today, but in two years' time, where you know, that's the whole thing of the user experience and

Empathizing with your users where it can't just be, yeah, the thing works as a prototype, works for now. It's like, but is it gonna serve the purpose of fulfilling the customers needs for the time that you've promised? and yeah, again, it's like when you hit that rock bottom moment of, well, you know, everyone hates it, whatever, you gotta just take a step back and be like, okay, does everyone actually hate it? or

Is it because I'm so emotionally invested into it that, you know, the feedback is something acceptable and something we knew going into it would be the case? So yeah, it's I guess that's another thing we probably share with artists, is it's an emotional roller coaster.

speaker-2 (50:11.138)
Well and I think I think the fact that the lows actually get so low makes the highs higher. If you integrate area under the curve, they have the same level of happiness that we do. We just go all the way to the moon and then we go get a shovel and we keep digging. And and we ping pong violently back and forth depending on which part of the product design process we're in.

But it's i I think we'd we chase the high for that reason. That's why we do this.

speaker-0 (50:42.24)
Exactly. And then you always wanna build something bigger and better or improve every single time. And sometimes that means you build something and something entirely new or you you stick with whatever you're making. I guess it it it depends person to person, but yeah, it's it's very much a I don't know, sinusoidal periodic curve that's going up and down. yeah.

speaker-2 (51:10.004)
That's that's awesome. I love

speaker-1 (51:11.468)
Guys, everybody, this is the Hard Tech Podcast. I'm your host, DeAndre Haricus. Grant, thanks for joining us.

speaker-2 (51:16.684)
me. This has been a pleasure. Shafi, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for the actual hardware itself. We are going to A, I'm gonna go play with this for an entire week and then I promise you my team will tear this down because they won't be able to stop themselves because this is such a cool product.

speaker-0 (51:31.114)
Absolutely. Yeah. No, let me know if you have questions and yeah, no, enjoy it. It's you said you were a Delta fan, so hope you have a good time doing emulation.

speaker-2 (51:38.082)
Yeah.

It's gonna be a great, great week. so everyone, thanks for joining and we'll catch you all next time.