Lecture 17: How to Design Hardware Products, with Hosain Rahman

What this lecture covers

Hosain Rahman, CEO and founder of Jawbone, describes how his company builds hardware products, from wireless speakers to wearable health trackers, by treating hardware, software, and data as three equally important disciplines. This lecture is the second of the course's "how to build products users love" pair, following Rahman's earlier discussion with a partner, and it focuses specifically on the physical product design process.

After watching, you should be able to describe Jawbone's staged product development process (from open-ended exploration through validation, concept, planning, and development) and explain why Rahman insists every product start from a clearly defined "why" before any building begins.

Key ideas

• Full-stack company: Jawbone treats hardware, software, and data as three equally important disciplines that must work together, which creates organizational friction because hardware and software teams iterate at very different speeds.
• The "why" framework: every product starts from an explicit statement of the user problem it solves and why it matters to the company, used as a guidepost throughout development.
• Staged process: ideas move through exploration, early validation, concept, planning, and development phases, each led by a different team and each ending with a deliberate go/no-go decision.
• Fast-tracking: Jawbone can skip stages for a product (the Jambox speaker, for example) when the team is confident enough to move straight to development.
• Asking about behavior, not preference: user research at Jawbone avoids questions like "would you want this feature" in favor of questions about how people actually behave, since users can validate your thinking but rarely invent the right solution themselves.
• Track, understand, act: the design narrative behind the Up wearable health tracker, where raw sensor data becomes contextual understanding and then actionable guidance.
• System thinking: decisions are made by weighing trade-offs (such as battery life against sensing quality) across the whole hardware-software-data system, not within one team's silo, which requires forcing cross-functional communication as the company grows.
• Category timing: the wireless speaker market went from roughly 0% to 78% of the total speaker market in a few years after Jambox launched, illustrating how a well-defined "why" can create a market that didn't previously ask for the product.

Walkthrough

Jawbone's view of the Internet of Things and wearables (1:07)

Rahman frames Jawbone's products, headsets, wireless speakers, and health trackers, as steps toward a vision where wearables act as a "context engine" that understands a user well enough to coordinate the rest of their connected devices, contrasting this with the fragmented state of most smart-device apps.

Being a full-stack hardware, software, and data company (4:02)

He explains why Jawbone must be excellent at hardware, software, and data simultaneously, and describes the friction this creates: hardware teams need long, deliberate iteration cycles while software teams are used to shipping and testing quickly.

The creation process: exploration through development (7:04)

Rahman walks through Jawbone's staged process: an unstructured exploration phase driven by "demo Fridays" and hackathons, an early validation phase where R&D must justify a concept, a concept phase where the product experience team defines the "why" and hero features, a planning phase full of trade-offs, and a development phase where engineering commits to a schedule.

Defining "why" a product should exist (18:11)

He details the framework Jawbone uses to ask what user problem a product solves and why it matters to the company, illustrating it with the Jambox wireless speaker, whose category share grew from near zero to 78% of the speaker market within a few years of launch.

User research done differently (25:17)

In response to an audience question, Rahman contrasts standard focus-group questions ("would you want this feature") with Jawbone's approach of asking about behavior and context, arguing that users can sharpen a team's thesis but rarely generate the right product idea themselves.

Case study: Up24 and the track-understand-act framework (27:18)

Rahman explains the "why" behind the Up24 fitness tracker: people have rich data about the world but little about themselves. He describes the resulting product narrative of tracking data, converting it to understanding, and then acting on it through tailored notifications and guidance.

System-level trade-offs and scaling the team (33:23)

In the closing Q&A, Rahman discusses how Jawbone resolves trade-offs across hardware, software, and data as a system rather than within individual teams, describes forcing daily cross-functional communication as the company scaled past 500 people across multiple offices, and reflects on why building a hardware-software-data company has no existing playbook to follow.

Before you watch

• Familiarity with the companion lecture on building products users love gives useful context, since this talk focuses specifically on hardware design process.
• No technical hardware engineering background is required; the lecture stays at the level of process and decision-making.

Check your understanding

1. Why does Rahman say building hardware, software, and data together creates organizational friction?
2. What is a "why" in Jawbone's process, and what two questions does it answer?
3. How does Jawbone's approach to user research differ from asking people whether they want a specific feature?
4. What does the "track, understand, act" narrative mean for the design of Up24?
5. Why does Jawbone sometimes skip stages of its own product development process?