Retail Demo Unit

• I developed a portable, representative, and miniature demo unit of our flagship smart mattress topper, that allows us to introduce our products core features to new people across a wide range of events and spaces.

As Eight Sleep continued to reach a broader audience, there was a growing interest to explore marketing in strategic locations where we could introduce the product in a casual setting, without having to set up an entire bed. The product team had an idea to build a smaller, miniaturized demo unit that would sit on a portable totem stand, so that interested people could feel the cooling effects of our system, while learning about the other benefits of using the product. I was brought in to drive development of the miniaturized demo, and oversee construction of the first 5 units before they were to be deployed.

I first made a proof-of-concept of a demo that people would interact with by sliding their hands over thermally regulated fabric, to emulate the thermal regulation of our cover, by combining some of our smaller accessory products into a mock construction of the design I was thinking. Once I had demoed this to the department heads and gotten approval, I designed the first version of the mini-unit in CAD, using the same architecture as our core product to both make sure we could deliver as close to an accurate demo as possible, and utilize our current China manufacturing workflow to make the parts required. Additionally, once the I had the rough dimensions of version 1, I worked with the external vendor who was designing and building the totem stand to make sure the mini-unit would install into it without issue.

After the custom parts were received and the first unit was built, it took a few iterations and tweaks to reach a version everyone was happy with. Each new construction required working with softgoods engineers to design the fabric cover to sit correctly, getting ID input for the fabric colors and graphics, optimizing the cooling experience so a user would get the best demo possible, and finally getting the entire experience approved by the product team.

In the end we shipped a sleek, representative and “painfully cold” demo unit, which was put on it’s first display at Silverstone Speedway. It was a fun special project and I look forward to making more!

Interested users slide their hands into the miniature mattress topper, to feel the extreme ends of the thermal regulation that our product can achieve.