Jerry the Bear: a story of user-centered product design | Aaron Horowitz | TEDxUnisinos

Aaron Holowitz considers himself champion of rock, paper and scissors, and a bacon lover. As a child, Aaron was diagnosed with human growth hormone deficiency. For five years of his childhood, he had to take injections to reverse this situation. Aaron highlights that that routine is not at all pleasant when you are a child. Being passionate about inventions, he wanted to find a way to help change the reality of kids with chronic disease. While he was studying Engineering in college, he and three of his friends created "Jerry the Bear."

Aaron is a creator. From scultures to business, he is fascinated by the process of transforming an idea from concept into reality. He is passionate about creating physical, computational interfaces that change the way we interact with technology. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of "Sproutel," the company that created Jerry the Bear, which is a robotic learning tool for kids who have been diagnosed with diabetes type-1.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

(Portuguese) Hi.

I'm very excited to be here today
and to share a little bit about my story.

So, when I was a child, I received
a piece of advice from my parents.

I grew up as the spawn
of a mother who's a dancer

and a father who's an oil painter,

and I would often
go painting with my father,

and as he would embark on a large piece,

I would sit and scribble
on a small piece of paper with a pencil.

Inevitably, I'd come to a point
where I did something I didn't want to do,

I made a line that was,
in my mind, a mistake.

And I asked him for an eraser one day,

and he replied, "There are
no such things as mistakes in art,"

and kind of went on to explain
that mistakes are what drives creativity.

It's that unintended consequence
that causes you to do something

that you wouldn't otherwise do,

and the process of continuing is the
process of creating something beautiful.

Now, this seemed
preposterous to me as a kid,

but the older I've gotten
and the more experience I've had in life,

I've started to really take this advice
to heart and to use it as a driving force,

and even more so,
to view the projects that I engage in

as almost canvases in and of themselves.

So today, I'd like to share with you
the canvas that I've been working on

for the past five years,

which also explains why there's
a teddy bear sitting next to me,

called "Jerry the Bear."

So, Jerry is a completely
interactive learning tool

for children who are diagnosed
with type-1 diabetes.

They take care of Jerry much
in the same way as they're taken care of.

They squeeze Jerry's fingers
to check his glucose level,

(Jerry) Wait!

He's feeling pretty
awesome today. So am I.

They can feed him foods
and give him insulin.

And the real magic happens through
a series of 21 animated story books

that play in his belly,

and it takes kids through this tale
of Jerry training for the All-Star Games,

which are kind of like the Olympics,

except with tree climbing
and swimming with sharks,

and things that are way more kid-friendly.

And hidden behind all
of these stories is a curriculum

that walks kids through everything
they'll have to learn

to take care of their disease,

from how to count the carbohydrates
that enter their bodies

to what to do on a sick day and how
your care management changes.

And while what I'm holding in my hands
is a rather polished product,

it certainly has refinements
that can be made,

what I find it most interesting
to talk about isn't the product,

but the process of how you go
from a sketch on a piece of paper

or an idea in your head

to something that's
in the hands of your users.

And the reason why that line
between point A and point B isn't straight

is because this process
is driven by mistakes.

Actually, all it's about is continuing
through those and learning from them.

So, for Jerry, the process started
with a very simple question:

"How can we improve the lives of children
who are diagnosed with type-1 diabetes?"

Now, for me, this question
strikes close to home.

So, when I was a child, I was diagnosed
with human growth hormone deficiency.

As you can see, I was pretty short.

This was me at my elementary
school graduation.

And so, what it meant was
that, throughout my childhood,

I basically had an injection
every day so that I can grow.

And while this was certainly
very influential on me as child,

as I grew older, I realized
that this really pales in comparison

to what a range of other children
experience in their day to day lives,

particularly kids with type-1 diabetes.

So, for these children,

their pancreas stops producing
what's called insulin.

So, whenever they eat sugar,
they have to take insulin.

So, they have to prick their fingers
about eight times a day

to measure their blood glucose level,

they have to take an injection
after every meal,

and they have to count every single carb
that enters their bodies

so that they can correctly
dose themselves.

And, for these kids who are diagnosed
between the ages of three and seven,

this is an incredibly difficult thing
to understand and to deal with,

and it's made more complicated
by the fact that, at that age,

these kids are not allowed to practice
their own medical procedures.

So, what happens is that their parents
end up taking care of them

and children kind of feel
left out of the process.

So, when we started with this question,

the first thing that we did
is we went and we talked to users,

we talked to actual families.

And we noticed a really cool insight:

all of these children were taking care
of their stuffed animals

as if they had diabetes.

They would prick the fingers
on their teddy bears,

on their stuffed lions, their elephants.

They would draw little insulin pumps
on pieces of cardboard

and staple that to their fur.

And we were kind of amazed by this,
we took a step back, and we said,

"Hey, it's almost as if these
children are projecting their emotions

onto their stuffed animals
as a way of coping."

And so, we asked ourselves whether
we could bring that experience to life

and whether we could do it
in a way that was educational.

So that's where the idea
for Jerry originated from.

This is actually one of the first
sketches on a post-it note.

This was taken off of the post-it
note on to the computer

where we conceptualized this idea.

And then came the hard part

because, as a team, we had no clue
how to make anything like this.

We didn't know anything
about circuitry, electronics, robotics,

transistors, resistors, photo resistors,

but what we knew
is that we believed in this idea

and we loved this idea
and we wanted to make it.

And so, we set an audacious goal

that, in ten weeks,
we would build a prototype

and we'd test it with a child.

And at this time, I was in school,
I was a junior in college,

and so, what we did
is we surrounded ourselves

with the best professors
and mentors that we could find,

and we started building.

And along the way,
it was an arduous process,

especially starting from square zero.

The amount of times
that circuits didn't work -

Jerry caught fire once
because I had wired him incorrectly;

you know, code didn't compile.

because we were missing things
like semicolons.

It drove us mad, but at the end
of those ten weeks, we had this.

You're allowed to laugh. Yes?

The only thing that this
girl's arm is blocking

is that that bear's head
is right about to fall off of its body.

The only thing that's holding it on
are three two-inch long metal nails

that attach the fur around its neck
to its hard modeling foam chest.

But we loved this bear, you know.

It was the culmination of all the work
that we had produced,

all those long nights,
blood, sweat and tears.

And the real moment came
when we took this bear

and we went and tested it
with a child, his name was Adam,

who lived out in a suburb of Chicago,

which is where we were
based out of at the time.

And I'll never forget this:
we piled into our friend's red Mustang;

we had brought a blanket to put over Jerry

because we wanted to conduct
a clean introduction interview,

and exit interview
without biasing them on their views.

And so, we walk up to the front door

and Adam and his little brother
are standing beside their mother,

their eyes and their face plastered
against the glass of their front door.

They're so excited to meet Jerry.

And we walk in, we do the interview,

and as we're about to lift
this blanket off of Jerry,

you know, my heart
is pounding... and a pause.

And the first words
out of Adam's mouth are,

"That's Jerry?" (Laughter)

"He looks nothing like what I thought!"

He proceeds to rip him to shreds,
everything that's wrong with him,

from the fact that his blood
glucose level was only two digits

to that he could only say a few things,

but the simple fact, you know -

leaving after that experience
a little bit, you know, heart-in-hands

and very humbled,

to see the excitement
that him and his brother had,

the glimmer in their eyes, the fact
that they were waiting at the front door

to meet the sheer concept of a teddy bear
that shared this commonality with them,

that shared diabetes,

told us that we had something
that was worthwhile,

that we had something
that needed to be pursued.

And what it drove forward for me
was the next four years of my life,

going through 29 different
prototype iterations of Jerry,

and testing with over 350 children.

So, below here, you see kind
of the sequence of very tall "Frankenbear"

to, slowly but surely,
getting a little bit better.

And what each one
of these prototypes represents

is the process of learning from mistakes.

You know, each one of these
taught us something,

and the fact that we built it
and got it into the hands of those users

taught us how to improve it,

what were the areas
that were working really well

and what were those
that kids did not understand at all.

And so, the most gratifying moment
came last Christmas.

We shipped the first
production run of bears out,

and we reached 2% of children who were
newly diagnosed back in the States.

And for me, this was so very gratifying.

It was kind of the process
coming full circle,

a way of helping my younger self.

And over the past couple of months
and over the past year,

we've just been getting
these photos that have poured in

from families sharing the real impact
that Jerry's had on their lives,

kids that have gotten over their fear
of finger pricks and insulin injections,

children that have used Jerry
to learn how to count carbohydrates.

And at the age of four years old,
that also means using Jerry to learn math

and this kind of
simplified form of algebra.

And it's all about kind of this moment
that I'm about to play.

(Video)

Mom: Who is that?
Daughter: Jerry!

(Video ends)

Aaron Horowitz: I want to give
that feeling to every child

diagnosed with a chronic illness.

And so, that's why myself, my team,
we started this company "Sproutel,"

and our goal is to not only
continue creating Jerry the Bear,

but to create similar tools

that improve the lives of children
with severe food allergies, asthma,

childhood cancer,
congenital heart disease,

kids that are facing these incredible
difficult things at a young age,

and helping them understand them,

and helping bring
a little bit of fun to that scenario.

So, to take a step back
and to synthesize, you know,

when Gustavo asked me
to come here and to speak,

I wanted to reflect
on the elements of the process

that got from point A to point B,

and it really boiled down to three things.

The first is a problem, a problem
that I was truly passionate about,

and for me, this came from having
a personal experience in my life,

something that I can relate to.

And the next kind of goes very
hand in hand with problem,

it's that aspect of passion,

it's the thing that makes it
so that, when you wake up in the morning,

when you go to bed at night,
this is what you're thinking about,

this is what you're driving towards.

And what those two,
problem and passion, let you do

is they let you get
through all of these mistakes,

because that's really
the most important part of the process,

it's making mistakes.

Without those,
there's nothing to learn from.

There's no clear line
from point A to point B.

It's the process of reacting,
it's the process of iterating,

it's the process of putting
something out into the world

and seeing how people use it,
what works and what doesn't.

And so, I would actually argue
and I would make the case

that, in art, in business, in design,

all of these processes
are really just the act

of translating mistakes
into forward progress.

And so, the thing that I would encourage
everybody in the audience,

whatever that canvas in your life be,

whether it be a business, whether it be
a problem that you're facing,

is to think about mistakes
as happy surprises,

as things that you welcome,

as things that will encourage you
to be more creative,

that will drive you forwards.

So, thanks so much for having me here.

It's been a real pleasure
to be able to share my story.

(Portuguese) Thank you.

(Applause)