What is the Haltian way of product design?
“no-bullshit approach and endless creativity”
This is how one of our customers, Rhys Newman the founder of Omata described the Haltian team and we think it’s quite accurate! We at Haltian are quite proud to call our way of working the ‘no-bullshit approach’ but what does it actually mean?
In this article, Haltian VP of IoT business line, Pasi Pentinpuro, tells about the Haltian way of product design and how it is used to make some of the best smart devices in the world.
Product innovation is a holistic process
What makes the Haltian way of working and executing projects so unique can be summed up to a few key points:
1. We aren’t afraid and we don’t avoid challenging our customers
Speaking your mind and not wasting too much time might be a Finnish stereotype, but we at Haltian have incorporated straightforwardness into our very core of doing things: We have discovered that challenging our customers with their ideas leads to great results. We give development ideas to plans and offer our insights on better solutions to reach the right results.
We also push when needed, because sometimes you just need a little nudge in the right direction. If a customer comes to us with an unfeasible idea, we don’t just shrug and attempt to make it happen. We give our advice and opinion, always our customer’s business case in mind, of course. We want your customers to love the product. We never compromise on quality, and we never settle on the first solution that fits the bill.
A great example of this is our work with W.L. Gore and the garment field testing solution they needed. The requirements said that the device needed to have a 22-day battery life, but we decided to make it 140 days, because why not? The longer battery life added value while not sacrificing any of the other key drivers.
The goal is to always find a cost-effective and the most sensible and the best solution for the customer. Not just to the technical issue, but for our customer’s goal. This comes down to us not being just an engineering house – we understand the business and find the best solution for the customer’s business.
2. We don’t turn down a product design challenge
We at Haltian love a challenge: if it’s something new and amazing, we don’t turn away from even the most impossible-sounding projects. When it comes to smart devices, user experience is everything, so we always think about our customer’s customers as well.
With wearable devices we know that the functionality is just not enough: the device has to be small, it has to look nice, and it has to be nice to actually wear. We specialize in miniaturized, wireless, and long-battery life products. When it comes to small devices, the challenge is always harder: today’s technology is all about having more in a smaller package. This level of integration brings many challenges to the product development process, the least not being the long battery life.
Innovation takes courage and bold moves. It’s quite easy to do the same thing all over again by re-using the same things you’ve used before. When you want to create a product that is unique, first of its kind, or does something that none of the other competitor devices do, you simply cannot go to the R&D houses that specialize in mass-creating devices. You want to come to a house that specializes in innovation and that can work with you, not for you.
One of the best examples is the coming new wearable smart device Zoy: the idea was so out-of-the-box and never done before, that even some of our own team said it was impossible. Nevertheless, we did not give up and soon we had an idea on how to make a device that would make sound recordings last for a hundred years.
3. We have one of the most experienced R&D teams in the world
This level of confidence does not come from nowhere – we have proof to back it up! We have the best possible experts in international consumer technologies, and you simply cannot get a team like this from anywhere. An engineering team that has 20+ years of experience is every product developer’s dream, and when innovating new products, our experience and the networks we have built are worth gold.
4. You will know every engineer working for you
In many product development companies, the customer might never get to know the actual engineers working on their project: there is a customer interface and a bureaucratic process in place, which makes making decisions and getting information extremely hard. At Haltian we have cut out these layers to make our experts available for the customer and part of their team, instead of an internal workforce.
When making a new, innovative smart product, the customer’s vision is the starting point for everything. To create the product someone else has imagined, our team of experts always works together with the customer and their team. This usually means nearly daily communication and availability.
Why settle for a good smart device, when you can make an award-winning one?
So that’s what the ‘no-bullshit approach’ means in the Haltian way of doing things. Yes, Finns don’t usually waste too much time on chit-chat, but to us, our approach means always challenging both ourselves and our customers to find the best solutions out there.
Creating something new takes courage, experience, and seamless teamwork. With those ingredients, you can get an award-winning smart device, not just a nice one!