Empower’s mission is to turn plastic waste into a resource by building the world’s largest collection-focused material platform and network. With over 2.12 million tons of plastic waste generated annually, and rising, the need for scalable, systemic solutions is urgent. The Solution The global plastic recycling rate remains critically low, estimated at just 9%, due to inefficiencies, contamination, and the absence of…
Designing technology that quietly blends into the background while solving real problems has always been a goal of mine. With the X7 Ultra-Low Power Presence Sensor, we wanted to create a sensor that could reliably detect human presence without compromising privacy, while using a minimum amount of energy to enable battery operation for mounting flexibility. The result ended up winning the IoT…
The release of the Xiaomi Mi Mix in 2016 ignited the current full-screen smartphone trend and disrupted the market by replacing the physical infrared proximity sensor with a software-driven ultrasonic solution. This is what the future of smartphones looks like – Ars Technica, 2016 The Problem & Design Constraints Since 2007, all smartphones, including the original iPhone, used an infrared (IR) proximity…
The award-winning Xiaomi Mi Mix redefined smartphone design and proved that ultrasonic proximity sensing was viable in smartphones. It was a 0-to-1 product that sparked the full-screen trend, a design choice that remains the industry standard today. However, it was not suited for mass-market adoption due to high costs, custom designs, and reliance on dedicated hardware components. To create a viable business…
Imagine a phone or tablet that fades away all distractions when you’re simply reading or watching a video, then quietly brings back controls the moment your hand moves in to touch the screen. A screen that adapts, not to your touch, but to your intention. This was the starting point for a series of explorations into how we might build more context-aware…