Echo Auto 2

For the Echo Auto 2, I owned the device’s die cuts, button designs, along with cables. I applied best practices for designing injection molded parts, compression molded parts, as well as die cut assemblies. This was a JDM style project, so I corresponded with our contract manufacturer, HQ based in China to review CAD drawings and 3D designs to troubleshoot issues like light transparency, button tactility, and cable retention.

Initially, when scoping cable lengths, the goal was to fit the Echo Auto 2 into 90% of cars on the market. I led an external study with Accenture to study 100 car interiors to optimize cable length so there was sufficient slack to reach the cigarette lighter adapter but not too much slack that it would be unwieldy and messy in the car. 

The cables had some late-breaking reliability issues where the devices wouldn’t turn on when the cable was yanked on. We found the root cause in that the strain relief of the cable was not molded properly to absorb the tensile force. Since we were weeks away from mass production, we implemented a quick fix of using UV glue on the connector side to ensure it wouldn’t disconnect. Glue is a difficult to control process in mass production, so we validated a new-to-Amazon cable molding process, low pressure injection molding in the meantime. After a couple builds validating the new process, we introduced this process into mass production.