The Sparkling Home project

The Nutritap (The Sparkling Home-project)

Client:
Marcel van Heist

Project description:
Within this individual project on the domain Home we were challenged to design purpose specific interaction styles for water supply. Every team, including five people, was devoted to a specific room in the house and received a magazine. Based on that room and the user group of that magazine we had to redesign the water supply.
During this project the concept development including a realistic prototype with integrated Phidgets technology was emphasized. Therefore the research-, idea-generation- and idea-selection-phases should be done very quickly.

Concept description:
In my case I had to focus on the water supply in the kitchen. Based on the Wraf!-Magazine I concluded that my user group was a female dog lover/owner around 30-40 years old. In addition I terminated that my users are very aware of their health and their nutrition.
Therefore my final design was a water tap which adds vital nutrition supplements into the water. Besides led-lights indicates to what extent the recommended amount of 1.5 Liter of drinking water is used. In the end this water-tap can also be used for normal purposes like doing the dishes or washing hands or food. In that case no vital nutrition supplements are added to the water.

Click here for more pictures of the final prototype.

Growth as a designer:

During this project I learned how to create interactive prototypes using Flash and Phidgets. Phidgets enable me to make functional intelligent prototypes in a relative short time, cause of the flexibility to program by myself and the long list of available components (sensors & actuators). Besides I got more experience with Flash, which enables me to create prototypes including Phidgets as well visual animations and simulations of concepts for presentation purposes.

The individual project made me aware that its design process (relative long concept development) fits quite well to my personal vision. For me a project is finished when a proper functional prototype is made. However I realised that time to make a prototype should not be overrated by testing it on the users: it is better to have a solid, good-founded design instead of having a good looking and functional one, which requires some improvements.