OMATA
Julian is a Founder and entrepreneur who created a product company called OMATA in his backyard garage in 2015. The core product is an unexpected, unanticipated device called the OMATA One — a unique bicycle computer that’s beautiful on the outside and smart on the inside.
Since founding the company, he has directly worked on and been ultimately responsible for every aspect of the business — from the initial concept, to its software & hardware prototyping, industrial design, app design & development, brand design, utility and design patents, social media, logistics, manufacturing, sales, &c.
“Cyclists today have access to more data then ever before. But to paraphrase the words of the German industrial designer, Dieter Rams, sometimes you need less but better. This ethos has driven a small team of cycling and design purists in Venice Beach, California, to create the OMATA One - a stripped back cycling computer with a refined analogue display. We think Dieter would approve.”
— Paul Smith, fashion designer & cyclist
Image from the merchandising display for the OMATA One, featured for retail sale in Paul Smith’s shop — a collection of unique and hand-chosen cycling devices, apparel, and accessories including products from noted endemic brands Cinelli and Silca.
“A beautiful juxtaposition of complexity and simplicity”
— RK, OMATA Customer Review and Watch Designer
“It’s completely changed the way I ride.”
- Katie McCain, OMATA Ambassador and Advertising Executive
“I’m a car guy…The data provided is the only data I care to know. If you are a car guy, this is the real deal for our bikes..pushing dials seemed so simple, but boy how awesome it actually is! It is a piece of jewelry, and I would recommend to anyone who gives it a look.”
— EJ, OMATA Customer
“Over a year of rides on my Omata and loving it. On rides the speedometer is clearly visible day and night. Worked great on a 24 hour bike ride with buddies. Numbers are crisp, oozing craftsmanship and simple elegance in the way a cockpit dial just looks cool.”
— Kai Tuominen, OMATA Customer
“I expected it to be great. But it is so much more than great. The experience starts as you begin to open the box for the first time. Incredibly well presented, though understated. When you handle the unit you know you have quality right there in the palm of your hand.”
— Andy Salt, OMATA Customer
OMATA Global Headquarters. Venice Beach, California. July 2015.
The audacity to imagine something truly different
Julian wanted to see how the world of the cycling enthusiasts — a very particular, small niche of a little corner of the world — could ‘be otherwise.’ Could he create a designed object that persuaded someone to see the world slightly differently? In a way that they were not accustomed? To see new possibilities and new experiences? To change their habits and sensibilities? To see a future that was different? That’s all to say, could the idea of a “cycling computer” be wrenched from the status quo in form, function, and meaning?
Every other cycling computer is relegated to commodity status. They are banal, undifferentiated products whose design and functionality is hardly distinctive. The OMATA One sits alone, attracting an audience that appreciates considered product design, the timeless characteristics of mechanical motion evocative of horology and motorsport, and enjoys the character that comes with rarity and exclusivity.
Challenging the status quo through design
The OMATA One anticipates controversy. It was not conceived as a device that would appeal to everyone, everywhere. Rather, it expresses a point of view, through design and expressed in the OMATA brand, that your bicycle handlebar is no place for a digital screen. Many cycling enthusiasts look for the meaning of the ride not in what a screen of data tells them they are doing, but in the visceral, somatic feelings and experience of motion and effort.
Defying convention as to what a bicycle computer should be, Julian sought to create a product that diverged from the implicit assumption that all cycling computers should be bland rectangles, made of plastic with a digital display. The OMATA One in this context is beautifully, unexpectedly distinct and expressive of these values.
“While digital readouts convey a lot of information, they are often busy and cluttered and not terribly satisfying...OMATA is an example of what happens when designers start with a clean sheet of paper instead of building off of existing models. The form factor is tactile and a pleasure to use and read—yes, in the same way as a wristwatch. The font used for the numerals was custom designed for quick legibility. And the One is light enough (79 grams) to satisfy weight weenie cyclists who shave their legs to save a gram or two, but it feels substantial and three dimensional in the hand as well.”
— Hodinkee
Meaningful UX
The OMATA One is about movement at its essence. An idea, that became a series of prototypes made on his studio bench, and then a commercially launched product that ended up in the handlebars of thousands of cycling enthusiasts around the world.
Julian wanted to create a product that created a different kind of UX incentive when compared to the status quo of typical digital cycling computers. In this way the OMATA One — and indeed the entire system of meaning around the “Omata brand” — was built around certain meanings and incentives more closely aligned with the ephemeral joy that comes from moving through the world under your own power while sitting atop two wheels. This sensibility is aligned with love of motion rather than the typical digital computer that projects a lust of the digital leader board, numerical outcomes, and data. Before the analytics is the ecstasy of motion, exertion and effort, which should be the focus while riding without the reminders of the digital screen-based world left behind — no flashing digital displays, beeps, and notifications will be found on the OMATA One.
“You don’t make the work. The work makes you.”
— Gary Rogowski Handmade: Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction
The Work
OMATA is Julian first commercial effort at product design. One of his goals was to touch every aspect of product design. He’s always had a unique ability to bounce between high-level concepts, such as the meaning of a brand or a strategic vision, to a translation of those sensibilities into material form — down to concept and technical design, engineering specification and implementation.
Julian created the first three prototypes (‘macroboards’) of the OMATA One, which became the reference designs and basis for the engineering specification he wrote to ensure the R&D team would deliver the translation of what he imagined as an engineered device suitable for manufacturing.
What Julian wanted was to go through every nook and cranny of what it takes to have an idea in the imagination, and then to materialize that idea. To start a company, design, develop, launch and sell a product; develop a brand and support a community — and all the challenges that such entails. This means he was involved in everything — design, specification, manufacturing, sales, branding, marketing, advertising to logistics, legal, accounting, and customer care and so forth.
The OMATA Brand
There have been 11 iterations of the OMATA Brand Book — a manual for how to operate, manage, implement and maintain the OMATA brand.
Julian collaborated with a former colleague to design the App, and then took on the task of implementation programming the OMATA Utility App when budget and agency quotes were dramatically misaligned. While time-consuming and technically challenging, this provided internal knowledge that makes it easier to extend the functionality — and also incredibly satisfying to have true ownership over key component of the OMATA One User Experience.
The OMATA Utility App provides a facility for owners to configure their OMATA One over BLE, manages their recorded ride data, and allow them to share their rides to Strava and other popular sports social network destinations.
The OMATA Utility App
Julian took on the task of designing and coding the OMATA Utility App when it became clear that there were no funds available to commission the work from a traditional dev shop. He embraced the challenge recognizing the significance of it being his first commercial App.
The OMATA Utility App would facilitate a simple mechanism for updating firmware, downloading and reviewing post-ride data, sharing ride data to services like Strava, and calibrating the mechanical hands on the occasion they needed to be ‘zero’d out’ were they to become misaligned for any reason — much like setting the hands on a watch.
The most difficult part of the App design was the Core Bluetooth component. The App uses BLE to communicate to the OMATA One, which he designed with a Nordic nRF52832 chip in order to support both the App requirements as well as pairing to external fitness sensors and accessories. Core Bluetooth is especially tricky to develop as you can only properly test its functionality with the intended hardware — which itself was under development, including the Bluetooth aspects of the firmware. This posed unique implementation challenges. While he managed to finally get the App working with the OMATA One, the code design had some challenges that resulted in a somewhat thorny bug that only appeared intermittently — about 3-5% of executions. And then the most beautiful thing happened: an OMATA fan and customer named Pepijn offered to help with software development, and ended up refactoring the Bluetooth component of the App, eliminating the App and bringing it to 99+% crash-free executions.
Prototype to Specification
From the very beginning Julian was working on the implementation of the OMATA One to learn as much as he could about the technical problems that would need to be solved, and communicated to the R&D team. This prototyping knowledge was instrumental in creating the technical specification that defined the core features, functionality, and design considerations of the OMATA One.
US10053178
Julian wrote the Utility Patent the USPTO (US10053178) granted OMATA for the unique configuration of the mechanical movement and sensors, and the OMATA iOS App for configuration and connecting to the OMATA One. He also designed and assembled the first two initial engineering prototypes of the OMATA One in order to define the formal engineering specification, parts selections, and performance parameters.
There’s something enlightenment in finding beauty in the most onerous and mundane of tasks, especially when they must be done and there’s no one else to do them. Since 2018, Julian has run the company on his own, which takes another level of commitment, persistence, and perseverance.
Factory production line for the OMATA One at the Sanmina factory, just outside of Oulu, Finland.