Product Design Inspiration: Interview With Hosain Rahman Of Jawbone (& Unboxing Video)

The hi-technology Jawbone bluetooth headset hits US Cingular stores today so we sat down with founder Hosain Rahman to talk about his new product and the market needs.

Congratulations, we saw your product on the front page of the WSJ. The bluetooth headset market looks crowded: Why did you get into it?

We believe the market is expandable. The market was crap and the offering sub-standard. Headsets have been made until now as an after thought: cheap microphones and plastic made in Asia and imported to the US.

We decided we wanted to bring advanced technology to the market, so we used technology found normally in military use. We wanted to apply design so we turned to Yves Berhart. We wanted to provide care so we used medical grade plastic because this thing is touching your skin all the time.

We also provide customization. You get four different ear-loops and four different earbuds to fit your ear perfectly.

How does it work?

It understands when you’re speaking and cuts out the other noise. In two ways: a sensor monitors the vibrations when you’re speaking and we have two microphones scanning what’s going on. The microphones by default clear white noise but they also learn dynamically. As you walk from office to street to taxi to store, the headphone listens and adapts to take out the background noise.

What is the consumer need for such a complicated product?

Mobility depends on audio quality – and that is influenced by network quality and device quality. The word ‘adapt’ is key to the way we are pitching this product. We are helping people truly become mobile with their mobile phone.

Will we see a change in consumer behavior pushed by the introduction of technologies like this?

What we see is a proliferation of audio interfaces: iPods, phones, record-decks, Skype. In the past we’ve used multiple ear-pieces and headphones – what we call audio gateways – we see this all converging especially with the adoption of Bluetooth on phones and music players. As a business, we see this as important category – we want to dominate the audio gateway category.

Thank you and good luck.

Jawbone

EXTRA EXTRA: Making unboxing videos seems to be all the rage right now, so we tried our hand at recording the unboxing of a Jawbone headset we were given. Apologies for the sound quality – iMovie can be a little crap sometimes.