Totem Tuesday: August 13th, 2024
Hey fam—
welcome to another glorious
🎉 TOTEM TUESDAY 🎉
everyone's favorite inbox party
(est. October 2023)
Alright Tribe—let’s Vibe. 😎
One quick announcement before we get started:
1)
We are in the final month of QA Testing, which is the final phase before rollout (keep reading for updates on this week's progress).
QA Testing is going very well—we are learning more and more every week—and we're still on track to ship this Fall. If you are going to a festival before Fall begins, please plan accordingly.
Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be able to get more specific on the exact rollout window. We're getting very close now.
When your Totem arrives in the mail this Fall, you will be grateful for all the rigorous testing we did—promise 😊
Beautiful things come to those who wait
🫶
--
OK! That's enough housekeeping.
LET'S DO THIS THANG
This, dear reader, is our weekly progress report to all our favorite people.
Welcome to the Totem Tuesday 3-2-1.
3 things we accomplished,
2 things we learned,
1 thing coming up
Let’s go, Tribe!
(P.S. — we have so many new people joining the Totem Tribe this week! If this is your first Totem Tuesday, welcome 🤗 We are so grateful that you found your way here.)
3 things we accomplished
1) Design Improvement UPDATE
If you tuned in for Totem Tuesday two weeks ago (July 30th), you'll remember that we decided to make one final design improvement as a result of all our QA Testing.
(if you missed that episode, you can read it on our blog)
This design improvement will deliver a much better Totem Experience for everyone around the world, in all kinds of settings.
Things like...
- the SOS button will be a little easier to press (particularly for those of you wearing beautiful acrylics)
- the LEDs will be brighter so you can see them more clearly while the sun is out
- the durability and weatherproofing will be even stronger
- better power latching to improve your battery's longterm lifespan
But also a few additional things that we've added in, like...
- hot locking, to help the Totems get better satellite connection during geomagnetic solar storms (thanks to Hard Summer testing)
- ability to use your smartphone to charge your Totem
- tweaking the "T" inside the crystal to look less like a cross 😂
We receive samples of the new PCBs that contain all these improvements TOMORROW!
(for those who don't know, the PCB is the heart and brains of the Totem)
We expect this to be the final version of the Totem PCB—aka, it's the same one that will be in your Totem Compass this Fall 🤗
So this week is a big milestone for us.
We'll be doing final validation testing of the new PCB this week, and then it's all about fine-tuning the code for an awesome user-friendly experience. 😊
Check below for visuals of the new Totem "T" and us charging a Totem directly from Makaela's smartphone!
P.S. — how cool is it that we're finally giving cell phones a legit purpose at major festivals??? They're expensive power-banks, but each phone can charge a Totem over 10 times. 🤯
2) Efficiency Improvements
Now that we've got the Totems working effectively, and we've got our final PCB on the way, it's all about EFFICIENCY!
Our engineering team is now in full-on EFFICIENCY MODE.
They're fine-tuning the software to ensure your Totems don't just work well, but are smart in how they work. 🧠
Things like...
- efficient peer-to-peer communication between Totems to extend battery life
- efficient mesh network communication to minimize the chance of congestion when (inevitably) there are 10k+ Totems at a single event
- efficient processing to increase speed, provide better User Experience, and reduce heating
and much more.
You see, a great product doesn't just work. It works intelligently and efficiently. 🥰
This is the beauty of taking time to do thorough QA Testing.
This is the beauty of attention to detail.
This is the beauty of patience.
We'll keep you in the loop on our progress over the next few weeks as we get closer to rollout! 🥳
3) UNILAD Feature
Here's a fun one...
Over the weekend, the Totem Compass was featured by one of the biggest digital media publications across the entire internet—UNILAD! 😱
(even if you don't know them, I guarantee you've seen their content)
UNILAD is one of the biggest media platforms in the world for people under 35, sharing breaking news and viral content.
They reached out to us a couple of weeks ago asking for permission to feature us on their channels, and we said "of course!"
UNILAD has over 55M followers across platforms and felt like Totem was a perfect fit for their audience.
If you want, you can check out the UNILAD + Totem facebook post at this link. 🫶🏼
2 things to learn
1) Screen-free Communication
Creating a modern electronic product WITHOUT A SCREEN comes with many advantages, but it also presents some design challenges.
After all—there's no way for the Totem to "talk" directly to you. Without a screen, it's more like the Totem uses sign-language to communicate. 😶
As a result of our User Testing over the past month, we made a UX decision that will help you have a better experience with your Totem this Fall.
We are now reserving the color Red exclusively to communicate for warnings and error messages.
Things like...
- low battery
- max peer-limit reached
- SOS signals from your friends
That means that you won't be able to choose a Red crystal color anymore... but it also means that using your Totem Compass will be much more intuitive. 🧠
Festivals are crazy environments to design a product for...
They're super stimulating.
There are so many distractions.
People (generally) aren't particularly clear-headed.
So we are making changes like this to ensure that EVERYONE can use the Totem Compass intuitively, regardless of their headspace. That includes...
- Rave Parents
- Actual Parents
- Rave Babies
- Serial Sidequesters
- Tech-Nerds
and more.
It's almost like designing a product for all the Seven Dwarves.
It can't just make sense to Doc and Happy...
It's gotta make sense to Dopey, Sleepy, and Grumpy too! 😂
2) Contract Manufacturing Timeline
As we approach the end of the QA Testing phase, everyone's attention begins to shift toward full-scale production and shipping.
One benefit from the extended QA Testing phase is that we've been able to secure a Contract Manufacturer which will allow us to produce (and ship) the final version of the Totem far faster than we ever could have while doing assembly in-house.
It all comes down to two words: SCALE and SPEED.
While our engineering and marketing teams have been working together to conduct in-field QA Testing and improve the Totem Compass, our Operations Team has been hard at-work in the background getting us set-up for production+fulfillment at massive scale.
As a result of all their hard work, we'll be in a position to produce up to 100k Totems per month when rollout actually begins.
That will help us quickly get down to a 1-2 week shipping window very soon after fulfilling all pre-orders. 🥳
If you've never developed new tech, designed a new product, and brought it to market before... you can check out a visualization of this final phase below.
1 thing to look forward to
Another thing we've been working on behind the scenes...
Totem accessories! 🤩
The Totem isn't just designed to help you find the people you love. It's also designed to look beautiful.
All Totems come with two durable, elastic Totem Lanyards:
- one black
- one pink
But we want everyone to be able to style themselves and fully express their personality through their Totem.
A few weeks ago, we shared early concepts for the Totem wrist strap, pocket clip, and travel case.
And now we are ready to unveil the first concepts for alternative Totem lanyard styles!
We'll be finalizing concepts based on YOUR FEEDBACK, and plan to have them available on our Shopify store after rollout is complete. 🫶🏼
Take a look below and let us know what you think!
Honesty + Consistency = 💗
Hey there 😊👋
You stuck with me all the way to the end.
That's pretty amazing, and makes me want to ask a question...
How many company newsletters do you actually read? 🤔
If you're like me, the answer is: ZERO
(other than this one)
But here's the wild thing...
Over 10,000 people from around the world read this email every single week.
Why do you think that is?
My theory: most companies aren't willing to be so open.
They don't want us to know about the things they learn.
They don't want us to know about their mistakes.
They don't want us to actually know them.
Why?
Is it fear?
Or is consistency really that hard?
We've done this for nearly 40 weeks in a row, haven't missed one.
It's certainly not easy.
But at Totem, we don't do things because they're easy.
We do things because they feel like the right thing to do.
And this newsletter,
Totem Tuesday...
Feels oh so right.
Even when it's hard.
I hope it feels that way for you, too.
Totem Team, out.
✌️
(P.S. — if this is your first Totem Tuesday, we hiiighly recommend that you go back and check out the Totem Tuesday archives. Every single decision we’ve made with the product is detailed extensively in past editions. Have fun 😘)
