From a story about WhoVision's engineering challenges (11/3/99 CMP Techwire):
"'We had a pilot fingerprint program in a burrito shop,' said Alex Dickinson, CEO of Who Vision. "They gave away a free burrito to anyone who would sign up. They estimated that two-thirds of their return customers signed up so they could walk in, put their finger on the sensor, and charge the order to their Visa card. That really opened our eyes on the issue of privacy. If you give customers suitable reassurance you won't do anything peculiar with the information and give them something of value for signing up, they're quite willing to participate.'
. . .
"The engineers worked for months to perfect their technology and were prepared to bask in the glory of their first public test last year. They felt they had thought of everything, but the more tests they did, the more problems they discovered.
"'When we put our first sensor together, we had a nice, ergonomic design, but we quickly found that women with long fingernails couldn't use it,' said David Snyder, software manager. 'There were also all kinds of subtleties we discovered when we went into other countries. There were very distinct differences we did not expect. In some cultures, people have very few ridges, but [the ridges are] very thick. In general, Asians have very fine lines and have a lot of them. We had to expand our outlook as our market sphere expanded.'
. . .
"'The natural inclination of an engineer is to build something in the lab, and when it works well there, you think it's ready,' Cole said. '[But for fingerprint sensors,] even the emotional state of a person matters. The composition of sweat changes; that's why people talk about sweaty palms. We went to another country [to test the system], and it failed every test. Fingerprints change a lot as the climate changes.'
"After subsequent tests yielded only slightly better results, company executives decided they'd better expand the scope of their engineering department.
"'We peaked at around 50 technologists on the staff, though most were consultants of all different types," Cole said. "They were people who specialize in testing human factors. We had to worry about things like the stuff your finger leaves behind. That 'finger juice' is pretty nasty stuff. It's a mix of water and oils, with some esters and acids and other stuff.'"
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Fifty technical staff! That is a lot of money, and they still don't have a working, production line product. I doubt that IDT had half that number working on their reader. But it was pretty surprising that they didn't know Asian women, for instance, had different fingerprint patterns than construction workers. |
