Thomas Moeller, fuseproject’s director of experience design, explains how design, technology and stories go hand in hand.
What’s the most important thing when you’re designing a new product? According to Thomas Moeller, fuseproject’s director of experience design, it’s the ability to blend technology into daily life in a simplistic yet unique way. Discussing the company’s latest project, FORME Life, Moeller explained how technology can tell a story through the user interface and user experience elements.
Decoding the Design with Guest Thomas Moeller
Watch our interview with fuseproject’s director of experience design. For full details, read the article below.
Designing Fitness Technology That Goes Beyond the Gym
According to Freeletics, a majority of Americans have said that their new at-home fitness routines have allowed them to find time for themselves to reconnect with their bodies as well as improve their mental health, motivation and self-confidence. While gyms were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, many people said that fitness has become more accessible and that going to the gym may become a thing of the past. One technology that has experienced an increase in popularity is smart mirrors.
Technology has become more connected, blurring the boundaries between the digital and the physical world. One example is home appliances, where technology has come a long way to advance traditional house appliances into more intelligent devices that can improve everyday activities. The same is true with fitness technology. Smart mirrors use embedded computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to respond to human needs by providing passive monitoring and displaying different workouts.
FORME Life, a collaboration between fuseproject and FORME Life, has launched an immersive and engaging home studio experience. Designed by Yves Béhar, the smart mirror functions as a full-length mirror and offers two distinct studios—the FORME Lift Full Studio and the Screen-Only Studio.
“There’s a real philosophy in our studio of products blending into our life and not overwhelming it. Rather, it’s something that can improve our lives and integrate it into a way that feels nonintrusive. What was really important with the Frame TV was that there was something there that was a problem, the big black box on all of our walls when you turn off your TV,” explained Moeller, mentioning fusproject’s recent collaboration with Samsung. “That’s where the value proposition was. We’re starting to turn that around to be about what I can do with it and what impact it has on my day. Some of that’s delightful and some of that is extracting new behaviors in our life. And, that’s what really got us excited about technology and digital. There’s a lot of muscle memory and some expected ways to solve problems in the design world with digital, and we like to spin that on its head. I think Frame and FORME Life are good examples of that because for so many years we’ve had these workout machines in our garages and our room and they’re clunky and they’re not very elegant, and they have a short shelf life, but we really believe that with the technology and engineering and design behind something like FORME Life, it’s future-proofed.”
“We could see this being very relevant in our homes 20 years from now, and so I think that the team—the engineering team and the manufacturing team—we’ve also looked at it [as] very modular so that there can be updates such as Wi-Fi push updates so that content just happens like in your Tesla while you sleep. There’s a real approach and philosophy in our studio to challenge some of those expected conventions and see where technology doesn’t really feel like technology.”
But what exactly is a smart mirror? A smart mirror is a mirror that is transformed by the placement of a semitransparent sheet of glass over a digital screen, along with hardware, data and a camera. The screen may display anything from the weather, alerts from email messages, and data collected from wearable electronics worn during workouts.
Added technology, such as monitoring systems with personalized information and computer vision, can help individuals achieve their fitness goals. Computer vision uses hierarchical computational design to achieve image acquisition performance, which can improve the diagnostic capabilities that we see in much of the medical equipment used in hospital settings. The devices also boast multimodal sensors, multiple cameras, motion detection, lasers, microphones, speakers and artificial intelligence (AI) software. The software can capture and communicate data, which can be sent over the cloud to a person’s smartphone.
Passive monitoring capabilities in smart mirrors can determine potential changes in health and collect relevant measurements while the user carries out their exercise routine. This means the technology can support a person’s activities rather than making them adapt to the technology. Data is silently collected without any interaction unless requested by the user. This data can be sent to other smart devices such as a phone or tablet.
“It feels like we’re moving really quickly and all the devices in our lives are so cool—connected and pervasive—but I think that there is still a kind of clunkiness that’s happening in the digital world. We need to break some rules, and I think a lot of U.S. digital designers have a lot of muscle memory and a lot of bad habits. We use the same tools. We have a lot of the same references. We’re all kind of looking at the same things. What I think is great about other disciplines like industrial design and traditional graphic design and other fields is that they can challenge our perspectives. They can challenge our approach. We can start doing really inventive, experimental things, and what comes out of that is something really fresh and interesting.
“And that’s exactly what FORME Life aims to do. Blurring the line between a home gym and home decor, the mirror blends into the rest of the home when turned off. But when turned on, the display offers live and on-demand personal training sessions with a touchscreen and voice control options. Additionally, users can utilize the mirror for guidance, motivation and encouragement during their routines. The mirror can record certain movements to track progress.
“It also features a mirrored 43-inch 4K UHD display, voice control, and a touchscreen to complement the dynamic training content. Workouts range from strength training, yoga, HIIT [high-intensity interval training], dance, barre, meditation, recovery and more. Trainers are said to be the best body and mind experts in Los Angeles and guided by Harley Pasternak, celebrity trainer and our chief fitness adviser.
“You can go in and do a certain kind of workout—some yoga or meditation, or a particular kind of weight training. But there’s also a level of intelligence and curation and personalization, so that if the machines understand in a particular workout that the weights, the positioning, or the form of your workout is not quite right, there can be guidance and more education and handholding on that,” said Moeller.
Using AI, the smart mirror delivers personalized workouts and suggests resistance levels based on preferences and a user’s fitness biometrics. FORME Life uses stereoscopic cameras and computer vision to guide form and technique—or provides the option to train live with a fitness professional.
The mirror is equipped with a premium nonslip yoga mat, a heart rate monitor, and a microfiber towel. The Studio Lift includes everything that comes with the Studio version, plus two of FORME Life’s custom Free FORME Handles, Premium Rope Handle, the Short Bar, and two Ankle Straps.
The all-in-one strength training aims to be more than just a simple exercise machine. It helps users to reconnect with their minds and bodies simplistically. With a minimal footprint, the machine boasts handles for strength training, an interactive display to showcase specific workouts and many other hidden features to provide the best user experience.
The team is already at work adding more features to the smart mirror. Giving an inside scoop, Moeller said, “There’s a lot of updates and additions in the pipeline for new content and instructors. There are new workouts [such as] barre, dance, yoga and meditation, as well as a range of strength training. It’s a matter of finding really easy ways for people to come into the system and to maintain that. We often talk about this interaction or engagement mechanic…. This is about everybody coming together, about community and increasing levels of progression, gamification, challenges, so you can feel that achievement. FORME and fuseproject are both looking forward to working together to enhance the accessory line and … continue building out the types of workouts and training, but also really evolving and making the content much more sophisticated and robust.”