The client is working to create a first-of-kind, immersive meditation experience that combines traditional meditation techniques with vibration, sound, and light. Their first concept consisted of bespoke, designer furniture with an audio and visual stimulus driven by a connected laptop and a simple media player app. The prototype was successful in validating early features and interest of venture capitalists, as well as seed funding. However, in true PoC form, the prototype was not designed for scale.

The Ippon team provided valuable direction and counsel to select the next milestone, delivery to beta users. Ippon’s impact in successfully reaching that goal was threefold.

1. Initially leading the company’s first roadmap, focusing next phase product validation on delivery to a broader audience – making the existing chair software accessible via IoT cloud;
2. Ippon then coordinated a cross-functional team of multiple partners to drive the IoT platform build, test and launch; and
3. Finally, the team partnered to upskill the client’s product delivery infusing new processes and agile structure to support both feature delivery and customer feedback / issue resolution.

Ippon not only helped build the cloud infrastructure to scale product delivery, but introduced standard agile processes that will guide product direction and focus for phases to come.

The proof of concept furniture leveraged a simple iOS app for basic controls, but needed a cloud infrastructure along with firmware to streamline the experience. Ippon helped identify and prioritize building this infrastructure to allow for scaling the product and accelerated beta user validation. Another advantage, this would build intellectual property while positioning the company for rapid expansion even beyond beta users.

First, we coordinated with a team of partnering consultants to design and develop the beta product vision, then shared our learnings with the planned manufacturing partner. Our Ippon team included experts across devops, cloud infrastructure, technical architecture, and product management. We would build the cloud infrastructure, pipelines, and framework needed to bridge the gap between the iOS mobile app and the hardware it was built to control.

Before our multi-disciplined team went to work, Ippon established the processes for an effective build; introducing standard agile ceremonies and a shared roadmap visible across all engineering consultants. This provided a clear and consistent framework for translating leadership goals and keeping priorities on track.

We applied a kanban format to the six-month target dates. Ippon leveraged the performance capabilities of the embedded system and implemented a modern service pattern to avoid getting bogged down by more rigid and inflexible patterns used in classic embedded system designs. Ippon’s contribution included cloud infrastructure for applications and pipelines, supporting back-end microservices and a data platform, packaging custom local services and APIs, and creating standard pipeline frameworks to build the firmware.

As our engineers hit delivery milestones, it was critical to integrate testing processes coordinated with all partnering engineers to ensure new changes were vetted before hand-off to beta users. We established separate testing environments (dev, uat, prod), updates when new features were ready to be tested by product, and a feedback loop for bugs and enhancements required to be incorporated before a build could be released to the public.

Ippon took a very active role in not just successfully managing the project at hand, but coaching the client’s product delivery team to introduce product and engineering standards, enabling the IoT beta product delivery as well as building the muscle memory for continuous delivery of future product innovation beyond Ippon’s role. By delivering the beta, Ippon was in a position to share recommendations with the client’s manufacturing partner to use as a model for mass production. We fully expect with a faster customer feedback loop coupled with the delivery to execute and distribute new updates at scale, the client’s concept chair will meet or exceed Series A targets when it opens the funding round early next year.

To position an early startup for Series A funding, Ippon was enlisted to design & develop the IoT cloud infrastructure to support scaled delivery of the proof of concept (PoC) to beta users. In parallel, this doubled as a coaching opportunity to lift team delivery and efficiency, by partnering with the Head of Product to create their first roadmap, introduce agile processes, and enhance communication across the organization.