7 Lessons I Learned From Building The Award-Winning Lumos Helmet
Hi, first of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Bilal and I’m the Head of Design at Lumos and the industrial designer for the original Lumos Helmet.
Launching the first ever helmet to feature integrated LEDs with turn signals on Kickstarter was such an incredible moment for us. So much in fact, that we decided to name the helmet after the platform that helped to give our little startup the boost it needed to bring the helmet that thousands of you love today.
It wasn’t the perfect product, in reality nothing ever is. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get damn close, which is what drives me to to create the best product I can. I learned a lot from our mistakes and vowed that I’d do better next time. Well, we’re about to launch our brand spanking new helmet and have a chance to right some wrongs. Don’t let its minimalist chic design fool you — this is a Lumos Helmet through and through, and all the tech and user-friendly features are there. They’re just a lot more inconspicuous. So let’s get to it, here are the 7 things I learned from building Kickstart, and how I’ve taken these lessons into consideration when developing both Lumos Street and Lumos Matrix.
1. Not everybody wants a road style helmet
This is something we already knew, since our internal team was also split on which style to launch with. In the end we decided to opt for the road style helmet and focus primarily on bicycle commuters. The requests for an urban style helmet has been overwhelming however, and internally several of us felt the same. There is also an increasing demand for helmets for electric scooters and skateboards as people are moving more towards smaller, more environmentally friendly alternatives for transportation. With all this in mind, we just had to do it as our next product.
2. Lights can never be too bright
Even though the Lumos Kickstart is currently the most visible helmet on the market, our community has relentlessly been asking us for brighter lights so that they can be seen from space.
So we got to work to figure out a way to give our users what they wanted. The front lights on both Lumos Street and Lumos Matrix are now at least twice as bright as those on the original Lumos Kickstart. We still recommend a bright flashlight to light the road in front, but you’ll most definitely be seen from the front.
As for the back…well, see for yourself.
3. Where’s the power button?
I was quite chuffed about how I integrated the power button into the design of the Kickstart helmet.
However we’ve heard from a few that its placement can be a little awkward to find when wearing the helmet, but ultimately, that it’s just something that ‘takes a bit of getting used to’.
Regardless, I decided to remove this friction point altogether and have implemented a power button that is dead easy to find and press.
4. Can we get a larger size?
To all of our customers who have been asking us for a larger size, we’re sorry we haven’t been able to fulfil this request just yet. We’ve come to learn that head sizes and shapes vary a great deal than what we had initially thought. Creating a helmet that would fit larger heads would mean us having to build the helmet from scratch again.
Thankfully with Lumos Street and Lumos Matrix, we can satisfy a few of those requests, as we’ve created a helmet that can accommodate slightly larger heads than the Lumos Kickstart. I know this is only a part solution, but I’m hoping this allows more people who have thus far been unable to experience the benefits of riding with a Lumos Helmet to be able to do so.
5. Where to hold the remote?
I really really wanted to implement this with Kickstart. But by the time I figured it out, we were already in the midst of tooling. What I didn’t want to do was delay our first product launch ever. Our community again confirmed the need for this feature, so here it is! I may have a further little surprise with this feature that we’re in the midst of testing so stay tuned for some surprise updates.
6. Where to route long hair?
I dropped the ball on this one. None of the members of our initial team had long hair so the issue really didn’t come up on my radar. Who needs hair anyway?
Over the years, we’ve been getting feedback from our wonderfully opinionated community and discovered that having a port to route long hair through can be a godsend for some.
We still don’t have any employees with long hair, but we’ve done a bunch of testing and this is a feature users with lots of hair really appreciate. The newly designed fit system for Lumos Street and Lumos Matrix now come with a Lumos Hairport as standard so it’s there if you need it.
7. The companion app should be a good companion first and foremost
As startups do, we fell victim to trying out a bunch of things with our app without too much focus in an effort to make it more useful to our users. But we let the realm of possibilities distract us from creating a solid companion app first. We’ve been receiving requests for deeper control over the lights and more useful information on the app and so we’ve decided to strip back the app and take it back to basics and ultimately make it a better user experience overall.
Over the years, mainly thanks to the feedback of our community, we’ve been making incremental updates to Lumos Kickstart that have mitigated some of the early mistakes we made. But with the development of our new urban helmet, I’ve tried to ensure that most of these aren’t repeated so that we can launch with a more refined product right off the bat. Hopefully this will show when you get to try it.
Join The Waitlist
Both Lumos Street and Lumos Matrix helmets will be available as a pre-order soon. We hope you’re as excited about its release as we are. If you haven’t done so already, sign up to the waitlist to ensure you can be among the first to get your hands on these beauts.
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