How doppel came to be called doppel

Work on doppel began in 2013 after Andreas, Fotini, Jack and Nell came up with the idea whilst studying together on the Innovation Design Engineering MA/MSc at both Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art.

But when doppel first started life it was originally named ‘myTempo’.

We were never totally sold on ‘myTempo’. Like a last minute pub-quiz team we named it quickly before presenting the concept at university.

Once we made the decision to form a company we knew we had to rethink.

We went through hundreds, yes hundreds, of options in huge brainstorming sessions. Some were dismissed straight away, some were argued over, but in the end we chose doppel.

But where did doppel come from?

Well. There are two main reasons.

1. doppel means double in German. Well, it technically means ‘doubles’ which is why our company Google alerts are dotted with tennis results. The direct translation for double in German is actually ‘doppelt’. But for us it was close enough. doppel taps a heartbeat on the wearer's wrist - a double beat that you can feel. Linking the name so closely with the main feature of the device seemed natural for us.
2. doppel is also a reference to the Doppler effect (or Doppler shift) because doppel ‘shifts’ how you feel with a change in frequency. We know we’re taking liberties with a well-known scientific principle here. We have a theoretical physicist on the team so we’re well aware that the link is perhaps a little tenuous. Especially as like ‘doppelt’, it’s still not even spelled exactly the same. However, for us that link still makes sense. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Doppler effect here’s a short explanation. 

You may have noticed that when an ambulance or police car goes past, its siren is high-pitched as it comes towards you, then becomes low-pitched as it goes away. This effect, where there is a change in frequency and wavelength, is called the Doppler effect.

When the source of a wave (a sound-wave in the siren example) moves towards an observer, the observed wavelength decreases and the frequency increases. When a source moves away from an observer, the observed wavelength increases and the frequency decreases.

So there it is, doppel. It stuck. And we like it.