Project Open Bionics and the launch of the heroes

We’re delighted to have recently completed a project with robotics company Open Bionics.

The Open Bionics team have made a huge impression both locally and globally by designing the World’s first customisable 3D printed bionic prostheses’ – the ‘Hero Arm’ – which is changing the lives of both children and adults with below-the-elbow limb loss.

When the team got in touch with us, the Hero Arm was not yet commercially available and they had three main problems they needed our help to solve before it was.

The main obstacle they faced was that they had limited means for potential customers to express interest in the arm and to stay up-to-date with its progress in development.

So our first port-of-call was a content-focussed site that would show off the arm to potential users, allow them to sign-up to their newsletter and to register interest in purchasing a Hero Arm for themselves.

This proved a great success in exciting both the Open Bionics’ team and customers, as co-founder Joel Gibbard said: “Simpleweb has done an awesome job and the finished website is looking really great. We’ve already had loads of positive feedback.”

They also needed to communicate with external prosthetists who would be involved in the process by measuring up Open Bionic’s customers for a perfectly fitting prosthetic – but they had no easy means of communicating this data with the Open Bionics team.

To make life simpler for everyone, we built a portal to allow the prosthetists to send the customer’s measurement and preference data through to the team building the arms, both easily and consistently.

“The customiser looks really awesome on web and mobile and I’m sure it will go down very well with our customer base”

The final problem was that Open Bionics needed a way for their customers to view and order the fantastic customisable parts on offer so that they can add to their Hero Arms and make them their own. Our solution to this was an online shop that was not only accessible via the website for customers to purchase add-ons for their arms at a later date, but also to the prosthetists who could help customers personalise their Hero Arms from day one.

Simpleweb bionics: what we’d choose if we customised
ourselves a Simpleweb bionic arm

This went down extremely well on launch day with Joel who told us: “The customiser looks really awesome on web and mobile and I’m sure it will go down very well with our customer base. We’ve had fun playing with it in the office.”

Of course, having all these separate solutions is all well and good but if the customer journey is disconnected it can be a frustrating one for all involved. With this in mind, all three elements were connected up in such a way that, whether expressing interest, getting measured up by a prosthetist or buying a customised add-on, each customer’s data would be available in one place to make the process simple at all stages and for all parties involved.

You can take a look at the website yourself at openbionics.com. Click the ‘Shop’ tab for a browse and a play with the customiser for yourself.