The Kikkerland Sound Pebble is a rechargeable and portable sound machine designed during a 3-4 week period at Kikkerland Design for their inhouse catalog. It was an interesting exercise into getting the most out of your CMF choices, designing around a tight price point and timeline, and a study on sound design.
This started as a brainstorm between myself, the CEO, and design director. At the time, our wellness category was just starting. We knew we wanted a sound machine that would retail for $30 as one of our first products. So I started to explore.
My first steps were to do some research into the Kikkerland brand and the sound machine space to find our niche into the market. So I started with some mood boards of the competition, past and present.
I was pretty amazed at the devices in the market at this time. Most were designed for babies or medical purposes, so they all had this very medical/clinical feel to them. The ones that actually looked decent were $60.00+.
Next, I researched into our own Kikkerland line, where I looked at some products in which we could 'build' from to keep some cohesive design language across our brand.
After some iterations on the mood board, we ultimately liked our stone finish 'pebble' family of product. We liked the meditative purposes of the sound machine and immediately drew inspirations from zen gardens, stones, japanese ceramics, and organic forms.
I believe at this time we only had this speaker. We felt the natural shape of a stone and the textured 'stone finish' we had was a good base of inspiration for the type of product we had in mind.
I started with some initial sketches which pretty quickly lead into more pebble shaped designs, trying to keep it as organic feeling as possible.
We explored many options but ultimately focused in a more minimal approach with side buttons to match our speaker.
From there, the sketches started to develop into CAD models and narrowed down to about 10 variations which were 3D printed, printed at 1:1 scale, and further evaluated for function and scale.
Below are some of the initial CAD models and you can see where we started to elaborate on the scale, button layouts, and component layouts.
A big development during this time was shifting from a more modern look, to a more organic, asymmetrical design.
Note: I’m only showing what I have available, so about half of our mockups and 3D prints are shown below.
3D prints and 1:1 scale prints are a big part of my process. They are are a quick and efficient way to determine scale and features.
We ended up with a final shape that hit all of our check marks for aesthetics and function.
After some discussion, there were a few things we wanted to capitalize on.
1) Make the object ambiguous by hiding the speaker holes. We wanted people to be curious about this stone and didn’t want the function to be clear.
2) Make sure that when the pebble was sitting, the speakers holes were not covered and had room to provide indirect ambient noise.
3) We wanted the design to be intuitive, portable, and unique to the sound machine space.
We then drafted an initial design package and quoted with a few vendors in China.
The initial cost was important here, because that showed us how close or far away we were from our goal. We ended up quoting different options with a full breakdown of each component: with a rechargeable battery, with a battery pack, different materials, different speaker drivers and types, different PCB's, and different storage sizes.
We ended up with a good side-by-side comparison of all specs, so we decided to move forward with samples.
Below are the first samples from the factory that were surprisingly close to what we wanted.
After some user testing with our team, sales, and some other individuals we decided on some changes.
1) Adjust the color and texture of the stone finish, so we supplied a new Pantone
2) Adjust the shore hardness of the silicone button strip and order of buttons (was too soft)
3) I wasn’t happy with the sound quality of the 3W speaker or the sounds the factory supplied. Everything sounded muddy, compressed, and overall super generic sounding.
We decided to upgrade to a 5W speaker and larger memory capacity on the PCB. I also decided to take on the mixing and exporting of the sounds myself.
While I was mixing the sounds, we requested another sample with our own layout.
This was based off of other products and our own user testing.
From here it required some more user testing to get the feel just right.
We received a new sample with the improved 5W speaker, better matching stone finish, and improved shore hardness of the button layout.
Next I started to develop the sounds. I pulled about 20-25 initial ideas and narrowed it down to around 10 sounds with my design director.
I started to source and field record sound files. I worked by layering tracks together in Logic to get a unique variety and quality mix of sounds. I also had to make sure each sound looped seamlessly with itself after a 45-60 second period.
For example, a sound like Rainforest consisted of multiple layers of bugs, birds, wind, water, and ambient noises all mixed at different levels. Below are some initial sound explorations.
We went back and forth with the factory for a few weeks longer until we were happy with the quality of the sounds, buttons, and finish of the product.
Eventually we approved the sample and worked with our packaging team to develop some ideas which lead to this elegant color box design.
While this was happening, we approved the final samples and opened the mold for production. Eventually off-mold top samples were received and approved.
Below is one of the first off-mold samples.
In the end we were left with the sound pebble as you see it. I was overall pretty happy with the results and felt we achieved a good balance of quality for the price point.
It was sold in Urban Outfitters, Walmart, Anthropologie, American Eagle, Papersource, and gift stores worldwide.
