With the steady climb of wirelessly charged devices entering the market Quirky identified an opportunity to create a Bluetooth speaker and wireless charging dock.

My role was to oversee design direction, user experience and execution from initial concepts all the way through manufacture to store shelf and beyond.

The added expense of the charging electronics meant that budget for mechanical parts was limited and we worked hard to ensure that the cost/value proposition of the design remained appealing to the market when considered against performance and function.

Functioning prototype built to prove wireless charging feasibility.

Functioning prototype built to prove acoustic feasibility.

Some time was spent going back an forth with our vendor to lock down the overall dimensions of the speaker unit. The performance specification meant that the device could only grow so large before we felt that it would no longer be a viable product.

Incorporating the wireless charging system required that we innovate on the construction of the unit to maintain a desirable volume and proportion.

Once the products volume was locked, the design progressed rapidly and quickly arriving at a point where we were able to produce a close to reality appearance model to send out with our sales team. The model tested well with retailer partners and gave us the confidence to proceed into a tooling phase.

Once tooling was complete we used early samples to construct working products. These early prototypes allowed for initial performance testing and the remote configuration and refinement of the units EQ settings.

Before PPR, bench samples were assembled and shared with the team for testing. Quirky’s internal QA team established a testing program that included not only internal Quirky staff but also members of the online community.

Although the product is relatively simple, some nuanced behavior was noticed by the testing group during this phase and as it was captured early we were able to correct the issues before production through firmware modification.

The base not only charged the speaker, but also wireless charging enabled devices.

The speaker was homed to the base with two internal magnets and assisted by the feat located on the underside of the speaker unit.