I recently had the opportunity to meet the team behind Minna Life, an award-winning sex toy company based here in San Francisco. Minna Life was started by a group of Stanford-trained engineers who couldn’t understand why the sex toy market was flooded with so many poorly-designed products. They spent years researching what women and couples were really looking for in a sex toy, and combined that knowledge with their engineering expertise.

Minna Life toys are unique, intuitive, and beautifully designed. They have two vibrators under their belt – the Ola and the Limon, and a third product on the way. All of their toys feature squeezeable technology, which allows you to increase the power of the vibrations simply by squeezing harder. You can also record and play back custom vibration patterns. Minna Life vibrators are surprisingly strong given their compact size. They’re also USB rechargeable, fully waterproof, and made of the highest-quality body-safe silicone.

I get contacted by a lot of sex toy companies, but I’m choosing to highlight Minna Life because I really believe in their products. I was beyond impressed with the squeezeable control function, which I think can help women (particularly those who are learning how to orgasm) develop a deeper connection with their pleasure. I also appreciate that they focus on making products that couples can use together.

Also, the Minna Life team is ridiculously nice. Everyone I interacted with was so friendly and welcoming, and I had a ton of fun hanging out talking shop. It’s always great to find people who share my passion for helping people have happier sex lives!

Brian Krieger, one of the founders of Minna Life, was kind enough to allow me to interview him. Check out what he has to say about how Minna Life approaches the design process, and what a newbie to the sex toy world should look for:

 

How did Minna Life get started?

Several of the original group met in graduate school at Stanford and were united with the other team members by frustration with the lack of well-designed, high quality sexual health products available (particularly those designed for couples). With a group background in consumer electronics product development and human sexuality, we set out to create the most innovative, fun products that we could.

 

What are your current products?

We currently have two award winning vibrators available, called Ola and Limon. We are also preparing to launch our third product. Called kGoal, it is the world’s first smart Kegel trainer and is a device + app that can guide, measure and track your pelvic floor exercises – it’s like having a gym, a physical therapist, and a tracking system at your side whenever you want them.

 

What makes your products unique?

The core of our products so far is our revolutionary squeezable control technology. Both Ola and Limon are incredibly easy and intuitive to control: the harder you squeeze, the stronger the vibrations. This also makes them wonderfully well suited for couples to use together – being able to vary the intensity in real time, without fumbling with buttons, enables a much more interactive and fun experience for both partners.

The other unique feature is our smart memory. Both products have the ability to record and replay any pattern of vibrations that you can imagine. We believe that everyone’s body and moods are unique, and we want to give everyone the ability to have a totally personalized experience, every time.

 

How do you go about designing a new product?

We believe passionately in user-centric design and have a diverse test user group that is an integral part of our development process. We are highly iterative and love building and testing new ideas and then working with our users to see what works and what doesn’t.

 

Tell me more about your Rumble technology

Most vibrators rigidly mount the motor, which dampens the vibrations. In contrast, Limon mounts its motor with additional degrees of freedom, which means that the vibrations are higher amplitude, lower frequency (in other words, this means they are more rumbly or thumpy as opposed to buzzy). It also means that we can concentrate the vibrations in Limon’s tip instead of having them be dissipated into your hand. All this means Limon is extremely strong for its size.

 

It’s obvious that aesthetics are important to Minna Life. What is the thought process behind how you want your products to look?

We think that a healthy sexuality is fundamental to human happiness, regardless of one’s comfort level with pleasure products. It is really important to us to create products that are both beautiful and, in particular, approachable. Even a great vibrator is wasted if people are unwilling to buy or own it because it is ugly or too explicit.

 

It seems like you guys are also more thoughtful about user experience than other sex toy companies. 

We think the lack of attention to user experience is a symptom of a larger failure in product design and development in this space. Partly because pleasure products have historically been a bit taboo in the US, there has been less competition and less pressure on designers to really think through the user experience in a thorough, innovative way. However, that is changing and we are happy to be a part by working to create products with a thoughtful and fun user experience.

 

What should women or couples who don’t have much experience with sex toys look for in their first purchase?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Obviously we are biased, but we think that Ola and Limon are great entry points, especially for couples, since they are so interactive and fun. A few things to look for in any product are high-quality, body-safe materials (100% phthalate free and high quality silicone construction) and rechargeable batteries so you don’t have to throw away piles of dead batteries.

 

What’s ahead for Minna Life?

We are extremely excited for our new product, kGoal, which comes at sexuality from more of a health and wellness perspective. There are a number of reasons why healthy pelvic floor muscles are critical to good health more generally, including pleasure, musculoskeletal stability, bladder control, and pregnancy/post-partum recovery. kGoal is a really groundbreaking approach to exercising and managing those muscles, and we feel really good about its potential to make a big impact on the health and happiness of women everywhere.

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I got a sneak peak at the kGoal while I was at the office, and I truly believe it has the potential to revolutionize pelvic floor health. If you’re interested in the kGoal, you can support Minna Life by visiting their Kickstarter campaign.