Imagine this: You reach into your bedside table and pull out a vibrator: a long, flattish unassuming shape with two nubs at one end. But today you’re in the mood for something different, so you bend the vibe into a c-shape that holds even when you let go. You then flip a button to get to your favorite vibration pattern.
You originally downloaded the pattern from the vibe’s social platform, but you tweaked it using an app on your smart phone, making some of the vibrations softer, and others more intense. Or maybe instead, you click-through to a vibration that your friend designed, and which she sells on the social platform for 99 cents a pop.
This, according to the British company MysteryVibe, is the future of sex toys—a completely personalized and sharable experience. Their product, Crescendo, comes with an app where you can customize and share vibrations. The toy itself can bend into four basic shapes. It has a g-spot component that you can bend “exactly how you want it, to the last millimeter,” according to Soumyadip Rakshit, co-founder and CEO of MysteryVibe.
This May, MysteryVibe presented at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City. Rakshit says that they wound up with a long line of people wanting to look at the two prototypes he had brought along “I felt really bad for the table next to us, which was an app for selfies,” he said.
The toy’s connection to tech is apparent in that it was first inspired by a smart phone, Morph, by Nokia, that can bend and flex into different shapes. Rakshit came across Morph in 2008 when he was working at a consulting firm.
He wondered what could be created if they got “the best talent at the forefront of tech” together to make a sex toy. Rob Weekly, who also helped design Orwellian biometric security systems, designed the electronics. He and his team spent three years doing research before partnering with Seymourpowell, a product design consulting firm.
Sasha Zotova, a product designer at Seymourpowell, found it amusing that the project was first assigned to her and her partner, Joe Allum. “We thought it was quite funny that they gave the couple the dildo project… we just went and bought lots of things to try.”
The challenge for the design team was to make a product that was able to bend and hold its shape without breaking. Zotova said Solutions ranged from an internal copper wire, which was deemed “not good enough” because it broke after 2000 bends, to a material that would get soft and bendable when put into hot water. The internal components that they finally settled on were inspired by laptop hinges, which, says Rakshit, “are so strong they never break.”
The vibe’s app, created by the New York-based app-design firm, Fueled, allows users to create their own vibration patterns or customize pre-made vibrations. Rakshit also envisions an open marketplace where users can upload and share (or sell) their customized vibrations. Zotova says the sharing aspect “gives me an idea of what other people feel and how they sense things.”
Emma Naylor, who works in Marketing at Seymourpowell, is quick to point out that you don’t need to use your smart phone to work the vibrator, which has a 4 gigabyte memory card to store vibrations.
Rakshit believes that the high amount of interest they received at Disrupt shows that most people really do want to talk about sex, they just don’t want to be the ones to bring it up. He hopes that his company will make people more open about discussing sexuality.
Naylor says working on the product has made her better at talking about sex and has even made her question whether she was getting as much enjoyment as she can in her own life. “I think its made me much more open about being able to talk about pleasure,” she said. At this point, she sometimes has to remind herself not to talk about sex toys at the pub or at the dinner table.
Mystery Vibe’s app will be available for anyone to use, even without purchasing a Mystery Vibe product. Rakshit hopes that other designers will make sex toys that can use MysteryVibe’s app. “We don’t want to be the sex toy company that wants to beat everyone else,” says Rakshit. We really want others to improve.”
While the company clearly wants women to be the public face, there are quite a few men behind the toy, including a mostly male development team who designed the app. “We really had no choice in that regard,” says Rakshit, pointing out that app-development is a very male-dominated field.
To make up for this, the developers didn’t make any user interface decisions without first consulting focus groups of women. Rakshit jokes that the developers appreciate that part of their job is now “to sit in meetings and talk to experts about how to please a woman.”
Crescendo is set to go to market in November 2015, but will first have an initial production run of 100vibrators this July. MysteryVibe is running a crowdfunding campaign on Born.com
where you can buy Crescendo for 99 euros, half the future retail price. Or, for 600 euros, you can get free sex toys for the rest of your life.
Rakshit says that, while sex tech has a coolness factor, in the end what really matters is whether the toy gives you a good orgasm. In just six months, we’ll get to find out.