Biosignal capture technology: brainstorm five products, then size month-one data storage

Suppose you have invented a technology that can collect every signal the human body gives off. As the product manager, you have to decide what to do with it. First come up with five ways to use it. Then pick one of those use cases and work out how much data storage it would need during its first month. ### Clarifying Questions - What does "every signal" cover in practice: electrical activity (heart, brain, muscle), chemistry such as blood or sweat markers, movement, breathing and temperature, and at what precision and sampling rate? - What form does the technology take (a wearable, an implant or a clinical device), and does it record continuously or only on demand? - Are we building our own consumer or medical product, or licensing the technology to partners? - For the storage estimate, should I count only the raw signals, or also processed data, backups and replicas? ### Part 1 — Five use cases Propose five distinct uses for the technology. For each, say who benefits, what problem it solves, and why capturing the body's signals is essential to it. ```hint Spread the bets Vary who benefits and what decision the signal changes. Five health-monitoring ideas aimed at slightly different audiences count as one idea. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - Use cases that serve clearly different users and needs, each tied to a decision the signal improves. - A short comparison of value, feasibility, time to market and risk (privacy, consent, medical regulation) that sets up the choice. - A justified pick of the use case to carry into the estimate. ### Part 2 — First-month storage estimate Choose one of your use cases and calculate how much storage it would need during its first month of operation. ```hint Break it into factors Split the total into how many people record, for how long, and how many bytes one second of their data takes. Then ask which of those factors your product choices can shrink. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - An explicit equation, with every input labeled as an assumption and given a round number. - Correct arithmetic and consistent units, from bytes per second up to the monthly total. - A sanity check against something familiar, plus the levers that change the answer (which signals are kept, sampling rate, compression, processing on the device, retention). ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Five use cases that are genuinely different, each with a reason the full-body signal matters. - A choice justified on value, feasibility and risk, including the sensitivity of health data. - A storage figure built from stated assumptions, with clear arithmetic and a sanity check. - A link from the estimate back to product decisions: the use case decides which signals are worth keeping. ### Follow-up Questions - Your estimate is far above the storage budget. Which product decisions would you revisit first? - How much storage would the same product need by the end of its first year if enrollment keeps growing? - Which of your use cases would need regulatory clearance before launch, and how does that affect your choice?