Melon's client TAO Wellness becomes finalist in Best of CES 2014

Melon’s client TAO Wellness became a finalist in the Sports and fitness category at this year’s Best of CES awards in Las Vegas last month. Kept in secret until a couple of months before CES 2014, their ingenious fitness and wellness device TAO WellShell became a CES 2014 buzzword, receiving positive coverage by most major tech websites such as CNET, PCWorld, Mashable, Tom's Guide, VentureBeat, 148Apps, The Verge and GeekBeat.

Tao WellShell is expected to reach the market by the end of 2014. This is also when the Android app Melon is implementing will be published. 

It all started back in 2011, when TAO Wellness was an intriguing, but under-the-radar startup working in complete secret on a small shell of a device. They selected Melon as their outsourcing partner to implement the Android app for their system and to also creatively participate in its user experience and interface design. Since then Melon’s Android development team has been building and evolving the feature-rich application accompanying TAO WellShell.

What is TAO WellShell

TAO WellShell is a pocket-size isometric exercise device which you press between your hands or other parts of your body. It tracks a number of health metrics, among which exerted pressure, calories burned, heart rate, and even sleep duration and quality. Functioning also as a step tracker, it measures your speed, distance traveled and record your route.

The partnering app receives data from the device wirelessly via Bluetooth and logs your physical activity and nutrition throughout the day. It analyzes all information you input (such as calorie intake) and guides you into healthier eating and exercising habits. It contains a rich database of foods, exercises and health regimens, which allow for user input and modification.

One of the app’s central features is the 3D graphics that illustrate each isometric exercise. These images can be rotated and zoomed so you can study how to properly perform each workout. The app’s entire database and features are fully functional without an Internet connection. This makes it a perfect fit for people with an active lifestyle who often travel, as you do not have to incur expensive data roaming costs in order to keep up with your wellness program.

TAO Wellness’s founder, Kostadin Yanev, PhD, a nuclear physicist with a Doctorate in mathematics, managed to convey the excitement of working on this project in one simple sentence: “It was miraculous to see how a simple idea became a new discipline in the field of wellness.”