Charmr: Initial Feedback
by DanWe’ve been overwhelmed by the (mostly positive) feedback for the Charmr concept, and we thank you for it. Comments like this one:
I am not a techie, just a Mom with a social work degree who has a 17 year old daughter with diabetes. My husband sent me this link and I am so excited that some real interest is being shown in developing an insulin pump with current technology. If I could get my daughter Caitlyn to download her pump record, when she is charging her IPOD and downloading music that would be a miracle. Currently the pump she has can’t download on our mac so we end up doing records by hand right before the next Doctors appt, not ideal. The charmr sounds really cool, she would wear it better than she wears her med alert necklace and it could take the place of that also. From a Mom’s heart Thanks for the real interest.
really got to us. It was a scramble to get the project completed in the very short timeframe we had (9 weeks) to research, design, and create the concept movie in.
Obviously in that time frame, we had very little time and no mechanical engineering resources with which to explore fully some of the engineering challenges that the Charmr requires. It is a concept, and a concept is only the starting point for any product. Around such topics as battery life, the size of the insulin reservoir, the exact size of the pump/monitor patch, and the different types of wireless technology to tie the system together, we simply had to make our best professional judgement as to what would be reasonably available in several years’ time. And, even after some of the critiques of the concept, I’m still convinced of its feasibility in the near future.
Some have asked why we didn’t solve the problems of diabetics right now. The reason is that while there could be some incremental changes to the pump/monitor system currently in place, those changes would make only a minor difference to diabetics. They wouldn’t address the range of issues we found in our research nor would they easily fit all the design principles we derived from the research. One might easily ask why it took Apple several years to design and develop the iPhone: because sometimes you have to wait for (or arrange) the technology and business opportunities to create a product that will disrupt the marketplace. Technology sometimes has to mature, and as many have rightly pointed out, the process for getting a medical device on the market takes much political and financial will. Additionally, we simply wanted to change the way people thought about these devices and how they could be designed, and that kind of demonstration isn’t accomplished by mincing steps. Bold strides were required.
So it might take several years for the technology to mature and for all the design decisions to be made and the product to be manufactured. But, based on comments like the one above, it might just be worth the wait.
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August 17th, 2007 at 8:15 am
It’s a Charmr: A Vision for More User-Friendly Diabetes Management?
Project HealthDesign’s blog points out the Charmr: a Design Concept for Managing Diabetes. The Charmr was designed by the San Francisco firm Adaptive Path, known in Web circles as a trendsetter with clients as diverse as Blogger, CNN and Crayola.
August 17th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I hope I’m not a bit too late with some more feedback
For starters, I read about the charmr concept a few days back, and I thought it was cute but unrealistic for the times. While entering a giveaway for some glucose meter half an hour ago (the adorable onetouch ultramini), I suddenly thought about some things I thought might be a good change in the charmr’s design. My father is diabetic, and he’s gone through a gazillion different gadgets, and they all have usability issues of some sort. The biggest one by far is not the size or the design, it’s the display and how big the numbers are. For he’s one of the MANY diabetics out there who have diabetic retinopathy. That’s an eye disease that pretty much affects the vast majority of diabetics at some point to some degree - something like nearly all with type 1 diabetes after 15 years or longer.
So basically, his problem is that the readouts on many of these devices are too small for him to read without magnification, and he can’t be the only person out there who might have the same problem. If there were a few alternate layouts, sacrificing beauty for readability, it would be fantastic. Something like a setting for large print and high contrast. Maybe even some alternate charmr concept that’ll have no display (okay, defeats the niceness of having entirely touchscreen) but will be entirely audio-based. Or some fusion of the current charmr with audio.
Lastly…as nice as the whole touchscreen-only concept is, both me and my dad have experienced firsthand with my iPhone as to how difficult it is to use only touchscreens to do certain tasks, even something as trivial as dialing a number. So unless the Charmr was sufficiently big enough to hold comfortably while using the touchscreen (with sufficiently large areas to press to do certain things), it’ll be insanely difficult for some to use. Physical buttons, particularly with some sort of indication as to what it might do, or some way to distinguish between buttons by touch, aren’t entirely useless. Just like people orient themselves on a keyboard by the raised bumps on certain keys, or a keypad by the bump on the middle key…
Just my two cents. Even though Charmr is just a concept, thank you so much for at least making an effort to make these things smaller, prettier, and easier to use
All those other various devices out there are perfectly functional, but ugly as hell. Although some are making SOME sort of effort to deviate from the utilitarian designs (e.g. the ultramini meter with the size and the colors)…and that’s a start…it would be nice if someone radical came along with something like the Charmr someday and changed the industry, just like Apple did with the iPod 
August 19th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
The buttons on the Charmr are considerably larger and with a larger font than anything on the iPhone. iPhone buttons tend to be about 9mm x 12mm. The Charmr’s are 16mm x 16mm, which are considerably more easy to hit (25% more) and to read.
August 20th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Hi Dan,
Wonder how Charmr and Cheetah can synergize. I’ve been working on Cheetah during the first half of last year. What do you think? Please see:
http://wiki.aardrock.com/Cheetah_Project_Proposal
http://wiki.aardrock.com/Cheetah_Work_Space
http://wiki.aardrock.com/Cheetah_User_Manual
Succes en plezier,
Martien van Steenbergen.
August 28th, 2007 at 10:53 am
The Charmr looks amazing. This will change lives. My sister has been living with diabetes for 22 years and currently wears a pump. The pump was a huge improvement from needles but I can only imagine what this would do for her quality of life. It WILL be worth the wait.
September 5th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Folks.. I picked up on the Charmr from a post by David Armano over at Critical Mass. I’m really pleased and excited by this project for a couple of key reasons:
1. I have a passion for customer experience, design and design thinking as I lead SAP’s customer experience team.
2. I’ve been a type 1 diabetic for 35 years now, wear an Insulin Pump and currently loath to move to a CGMS because of how bulky and unstable they currently are.
I would love to participate in this project in any way possible.
Might we have a discussion on this?
I look forward to it!
Best,
Steve
September 10th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
My 9 year old girl with diabetes would love this….I also have a great integration idea for you that she uses now with her exercise. It would be a perfect fit with the Charmr.
Lisa
September 20th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Hi there, i’m a mother of a teenage diabetic. my son is currently on a pumb, but being a teenagner he doesn’t remember or choose to remember to test often enough The charmer sounds amazing, so what are the next steps to acutally getting this to market?
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:40 am
Hello,
My girlfriend is a fragile diabetic, meaning it is very difficult for her to control her blood glucose levels on a day to day basis. Like many diabetics I would imagine her interest in maintaining a healthy balance moves from time to time because of the sheer effort that it takes to maintain it. The pump is helpful but the danger of her blood sugar going low and her siezing leaves her with a decision to stay high or pass out. We looked into the constant monitoring with the mini-med and a couple of other companies have it but insurance doesn’t pay for it currently which doesn’t give any other better options for better blood glucose control. Something like this would be huge, even if the hand device isn’t super small. The Omnipod has figured out the wireless issues and springless needle but the unit is still large and wouldn’t suit discression in tighter clothing. The mini med has the monitoring system but that is another needle, another plastic peice comming off the body. If you could take just those systems and put it in your packaging it would be great. Also, something that you didn’t address as far as I saw, when diabetics sugar does low, very low they can pass out, loose where they are, etc, extreemly dangerous. When a diabetic doesn’t know they are going low or they can’t respond to it often they have to rely on others to give them a glucagon shot. If a small amount of glucagon was included in a similar packet as the insulin to maintain a specified BG range that would be great. In any case I would hope something like this would happen sooner than later and we would help the process in any way possible. Please keep us posted, Scott.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:59 am
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070707142658.htm
also, If you guys hadn’t seen this this is an article about scientists in Cambridge that are designing a mathematical and software application for constant monitoring and admineristing of insulin. Thanks.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:15 am
You know,
As i watched your video, i realized just how close we are to this. Mini-Med has released a combined insulin pump/monitor, another company has designed a reservoir that sits on the skin as you showed and operated from a separate device, Between the two, notwithstanding the current error range of skin based glucose testing, you could go to market as soon as you put the team together to build it.
All i have to say is HURRY!!!