Case Study - Off-grid truck routing and sensors

Overview

When vaccines and perishable foods leave the warehouse en route for delivery, shippers work hard to keep them safely within the right temperature range. It's a question of quality, of course, but also public health and compliance with trade regulations. The cold chain industry employs a wide range of sensors for real-time monitoring, but most demand cellular service to operate. From mountains to oceans and rainforests, however, a vast part of the globe simply lacks the wireless infrastructure. Meanwhile, natural disasters and war can knock cell towers offline, leading in turn to data blackouts. Corio is a startup seeking to solve just this problem. This year, they asked our team to take their design to the next level.

What we did

For many startups, prototypes are key to selling the product vision for customers and investors. A good story is essential, helping showcase why this product is unique and highly valuable in the market. Thus our work began by a deep dive into market trends and study of logistics. We canvased cloud platforms and IoT networks, ensuring a full understanding of the technical landscape. From here we built storyboards, illustrations and a written script for each part of a six-minute demo pitch.

Working backwards, our team got to work bringing each scene to life through a real-time, immersive prototype. Corio's magic rests in multi-user mobile interfaces that work off-the-grid, so we needed an immersive prototype. Luckily, we've spent the last decade building new technologies for just such an occasion. Because design change happens, all our prototypes are built for frequent iteration. We use design pattern libraries and atomic design, so updates always have the right look and feel.

How It Looked

Business Impact

Corio is a social enterprise, focused on safety and resilience for the smart cities of tomorrow. While cold chain trucking represents a first strong market, the team was founded with a mission to support natural disaster response. Our real-time prototypes captured the true potential for both logistics and public safety, helping to garner backing from IBM, Joyent and the Linux Foundation plus showcases at the United Nations, Mozilla Headquarters and a television spot with the Weather Company. With help from our prototyping methods, the team received funding through 2 grand-prize awards and funding from the US National Science Foundation. Further, they secured continued technical partnerships to connect their platform with leading Internet of Things solutions.