Saturday, October 1, 9:00 am — 11:00 am (Rm 402AB)
Abstract:
AES Super Session: How to Develop a Killer Audio Product in One Day!
In the lead-off session of Super Saturday, we will explore the initial phases of product development. These three areas are done most effectively when they are done in parallel to speed time to market and ensure development team collaboration.
Product Management has become one of the most important functions in developing and bringing products to market today. In the past product managers mainly focused on product features and pricing. Today the Product Manager must take a 360 degree view in include a broader variety of expertise and content. Scott Leslie of PD Squared will present the elements of such a complete view of product management:
1. Business case
2. Sales forecasting by geography and product segment
3. Market assessment
4. The constantly changing competitive landscape
5. Sales channels
6. Detailed pro forma product costing
7. Building the development budget
8. Creating a Project Schedule
9. Designing the development team
10. Selecting partners to win rather than selecting suppliers on cost
User Experience covers all aspects of a product usage today, from its size, shape and weight to user input from physical controls to mobile apps to voice input. Marc Krolczyk and Frank Marino of Three Design will present what it takes to makes User Experience the difference between a winner and a loser in the market.
Industrial Design is all important function of determining the “look and feel” of a product. From shape and size to weight to materials to placement of features, industrial design is making sure that the product appeals to the buyer from the pre-sales phase to when it has lived out its useful life. Our expert in Industrial Design, Myk Lom of Lum Design Associates (LDA) will engage with our audience in what it takes to develop products that connect with consumers today and cause them to hit the “buy” button as soon as they see the product!
Saturday, October 1, 11:15 am — 1:00 pm (Rm 402AB)
Abstract:
AES Super Session: How to Develop a Killer Audio Product in One Day!
In the second session of Super Saturday, our team will explore the depths of acoustic design and DSP, two disciplines when put together, can be used to create a product that it more than the sum of its parts.
Acoustic Design when it comes to successful products is always a compromise. Size, bass and loud are three competing goals of any audio product. Today there are rich tools, methods and technologies to take on acoustic challenges and bring amazing acoustic performance to the consumer. Mark Trainer of Minimum Phase will explore what is possible with transducer selection, acoustic modeling, DSP manipulation and 3D printing and show how he applied it to design the Speak2Me product that you will see for the first time at the AES Super Saturday event.
DSP Engineering today has evolved rapidly. The amount of processing power from even the lowest cost silicon devices has changed the game from a hardware to a software based engineering effort. The high level software tools of today and now compete and exceed the capability of even the best DSP coders. This changes the approach and even the method of developing audio products as DSP simulations can be tuned and iterated in very short times allowing for significant advances in optimization of both cost and performance that was not possible until recently. Paul Beckmann of DSP Concepts will discuss the details of how to approach product development from the beginning with DSP as the game changer for any audio product. During the session Paul will design and demo the DSP chain developed for the Speak2Me product. He’ll solicit help from the audience in making tradeoffs in the loudspeaker and microphone processing
Saturday, October 1, 2:00 pm — 4:00 pm (Rm 402AB)
Abstract:
AES Super Session: How to Develop a Killer Audio Product in One Day!
Following our lunch break, the PDSS Team will host a Demo to show off the Speak2Me product to PDSS attendees in a “mini” trade show floor co-located in the PDSS room. You will see and hear how it performs from a variety of consumer uses. The development team will be available to answer questions from PDSS attendees.
Voice Input using Natural Language Understanding is probably the hottest feature set in consumer audio products today from loudspeakers to remote controls to doorbells to assistive living devices and beyond. With the growth in IoT devices predicted in the billions, a key input to many of these devices is listening and processing information from humans. Barry Roitblat of VoiceBox will lead a discussion of the primary considerations for creating a great user experience using natural language understanding.
Natural Language Understanding is about more than just voice recognition. Once the system understands the words spoken, it must still discern the meaning and then take the appropriate action. To do this, requires Voice AI. Voice AI combines a number of features and techniques, including:
• Context – historical, conversations, environmental, or personal information that lend to the understanding of the current request.
• Semantic Understanding - parsing, knowledge, and reasoning to determine the meaning of a request from the language structure, and infer appropriate queries and actions to fulfill the request
• Machine Learning - adapt to different dialects and pronunciations, understand new words and aliases, derive new relationships, and learn new phrases or other language forms from previous interactions
• Dialog – use natural language responses and multi-modal interaction (speech, touch, gesture, etc.) to request additional information needed to fulfill a request
Saturday, October 1, 4:15 pm — 6:00 pm (Rm 402AB)
Abstract:
AES Super Session: How to Develop a Killer Audio Product in One Day!
In our last session, the team will discuss how the product moves from the design phase to the production phase. Most product companies have challenges in getting through this phase quickly and without undue stress. Making sure the design is right, it is properly documented and having the right partners is essential to success in getting the product into the customers’ hands.
Design Validation is the phase of development where the design is fully evaluated to make sure that the design can transition to be manufactured in high quantities while adhering to product specifications and costing constraints. Production Verification is where the appropriate systems and controls are put in place to ensure that the production facility, equipment and work force are ready to produce the product to meet customer demand for availability price, quality. Jonathan Novick of Audio Precision will discuss these key topics and how a product can successfully move from design phase to the production phase. He will look at how these are applied to the Speak2Me product and what challenges a product company faces in making sure that a high level of confidence about the product’s ability to perform as expected when it is in the customer’s hands.
Sourcing and Supply Chain today has evolved tremendously over the past 15 years. Audio products have morphed from separate components to integrated solutions of analog and digital electronics, wireless, speakers and enclosures and the factories and their support teams have also evolved to support these products.
There is a lot more to getting a product into production than sending out a bid and picking the lowest cost producer. Timing of vendor selection is often early on in the process to get the sign on of the vendor team and to insure the development of a product that fits both the brand’s and factory fabrication processes. Product price points and quality, projected quantities, ability and speed to ramp up production, are just some of the selection criteria. Much of the heavy lifting in product development as well as design for manufacturability are often the responsibility of the vendor with oversight by the Brand.
Mike Klasco with Menlo Scientific, who has been involved with product development and international factory selection for over 30 years. Mike will discuss specifically how he addresses bringing the Speak2Me to market and the roles that the Sourcing and Supply Chain people must perform to ensure product and market success today.