Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Ted Ko

My name is Ted Ko and I’m a product designer. I was formerly at the design firm IDEO and mobile advertising startup Yieldmo building digital products.

While I actually have a formal degree in hardware engineering, I have spent most my time designing, building, and deploying full-scale software solutions.

So…why did I all of sudden jump back into building hardware products?

1. Robots are just fing cool.**

First things first, I just have to say that robots are fucking cool. Who wouldn’t want to be building them?

‘nuff said.

2. Robots still need good design.

When building any kind of robot, there are a lot of moving parts — literally. You have to consider how the mechanical parts fit together with circuit boards, and how those circuit boards use the proper software algorithms to control each component.

It’s easy to get caught up in the technicality of everything: How much torque do my wheels need to generate to get motion? What kind of processing power will let me run machine learning algorithms?

But this is the wrong way to think about robots.

You have to take a step back and start off asking the right questions, without just jamming technological solutions together.

“High Tech” doesn’t necessarily mean a well-designed solution.

3. Robots are just getting started.

The concept of robots has been around for hundreds of years. Humans have always envisioned manmade machines that can make human lives easier.

But why is it different now?

For the first time ever, the development of smart robots has been democratized.

Everyone can now get a robot!

If you do the market research, look at trend reports…heck, if you just open your newsfeed and you’ll see a plethora of articles about artificial intelligence, machine learning, chat bots, self-driving cars…robots are everywhere.

…and they’re just getting started.

Ok, so what kind of robots am I building?

I’m building in-home robot vacuums. Yes, I’m building those “roomba” things…but in our own way…

I believe that daily cleaning should be really simple, so I’ve tasked myself to answer the following question:

How might we design robotic solutions to help people focus on the truly important aspects of life, instead of chores?

The robot vacuum industry is still super young, and I know that there’s a lot of opportunity to make big change.

I’m hoping to bring design into this industry, and see how we can create better, more impactful solutions in home cleaning.

What now?

I’m the new Product Manager at Kobot, a Techko Kobot Inc. company. I’m excited to contribute to a company that I grew up with, and bring design to a young and budding industry.

I’d love if you follow me along my new journey via this Medium publication or through other social media channels.

Web/Mobile: www.techkokobot.com
Facebook: @kobotusa
Instagram: @iamtedko @kobotusa
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamtedko/

Hey guys, I’m building robots! was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey guys, I’m building robots!

Cool stuff, every week

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