Margarita Zulueta
*Note: I took the lead on this development.
From our competitive analysis, we confirmed that most consumers do their shopping online and to easily reach them we developed an eCommerce platform that highlights the VODA system of products.
1) The eCommerce experience allows users to not only purchase the components individually or in a bundle, but also features zip code input to determine the geospecific filtration mixture to be sent to the user.
2) The platform also includes an option to buy a limited geospecific filtration quantity needed for any travel they take out of their local area.
The eCommerce platform
First Round of Hi-Fi Frames of the VODA Mobile App
💻 Desktop Site
👆Tablet Site
📱Mobile Site
📱Mobile App
What does this digital system comprise of?
I designed four components: the desktop site, the tablet site, the mobile site, and the mobile application. All of these sites contain shopping capabilities with the app serving more as a filter maintenance / replenishment function.
The first round of e-commerce development centered solely on using the mobile app as a shopping and educational experience. The app design had multiple features including shopping capabilities, explanations of the VODA system, and a quiz to discover the geospecific mixture needed.
Users gave the following feedback:
1) The text is hard to read and very small.
2) The VODA system capabilities are not clear.
3) Ordering from a site is more comfortable.
Initial Pass
VODA
MAKING PERSONAL WATER FILTRATION CLEANER AND SAFER BY USING WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE: YOUR GEOLOCATION
VODA is a product, brand, and service experience that makes personal water filtration safer and more sustainable. VODA makes water safer by filtering out geo-specific contaminants in your local water supply. The VODA system is more sustainable than other brands on the market thanks to the refillable container and compostable filtration media.
🤔 The Challenge
Personal water drinking practices aren't as sustainable as we thought. Many people choose not to drink tap water even if they know the health benefits because they find it untrustworthy. Not only that personal water filters use up more plastic than we think (just look at the packaging!).
🤔 The Opportunity
How might personal water filtration become more sustainable and seen as a more trustworthy option?
🖐 My role
Took the lead in experience and design strategy, branding, and designing the digital product.
Collaborated with the team to ideate on the physical product and overall experience.
🤩 Recognitions
This project was recognized on Core77 and received multiple awards in the Home & Living and Consumer Technology categories.
Project Summary
TIME FRAME
2021 for 11 weeks at SVA MFA Products of Design with Atlason Design
PROCESSES
Product Design, Service Design, Design Strategy, and Branding
DESIGNERS
Margarita Zulueta, Zekun Yang, Anne Keating
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe CC (Photoshop, Illustrator, XD), Miro, 3D Printing, Google Suite
Design Process
UNDERSTANDING THE PERSONAL WATER FILTRATION SYSTEM AND PERCEPTIONS
We developed a built out plan to determine where the opportunity would be to innovate in the personal water filtration market and design a product and service from there. We knew that Brita is the leading personal water filtration provider, but we also wanted to determine why people were not drinking tap water in general and how we could determine a way to encourage them to change their habits.
According to National Geographic, “A million plastic beverage bottles were purchased each minute as of 2017,” which leads to heavy plastic waste.
Environmental consultant group, Dovetail Partners notes "the U.S. has the highest total consumption of bottled water in the world – 13.7 billion gallons in 2017".
People are afraid of drinking tap water.
Our lead users say that they drink filtered water or bottled water if no filtration is available because they don't trust their water supply to be clean. Even though, Healthline says that tap water is better for the environment, costs less than bottled water, and is safe.
Filters could be more sustainable
Part of the BRITA packaging uses plastic that is not accepted by recycling plants in certain areas, so it ends up contributing to plastic waste.
Our Research Findings
We found out a couple of things from our initial secondary research and primary research methods about the personal water drinking system.
PRODUCT & SERVICE STRATEGY
COMBINING SUSTAINABILITY WITH TRUSTWORTHINESS TO CREATE A BETTER PERSONAL WATER DRINKING EXPERIENCE
We developed a product based service to iterate on the two key themes that obstruct continuous adoption of drinking water. The VODA system addresses both the safety and sustainability concerns regarding drinking water by redesigning the pitcher itself to be more sustainable and developing a service that uses what people already have access to: their local drinking water.
PRODUCT & SERVICE DESIGN
CREATING A PHYSICAL PRODUCT AND SERVICE OFFERING FOR A BETTER DRINKING EXPERIENCE
We developed multiple rounds of both the physical product and the service, which included the development of the e-commerce platform. We designed a reusable and recyclable funnel and filter filtration system that adheres with most water pitchers. In addition to that, we mapped out how the service would work and determined that a direct to consumer strategy would have a wider reach and be a good starting distributor channel.
RESULTS & NEXT STEPS
THE INTEREST AND RECOGNITION SHOWS THE NEED FOR THE PRODUCT, BUT MORE HAS TO BE CONSIDERED BEFORE LAUNCH.
While we got great recognition, such as from Core77. We also realized that we would need to develop the VODA product system further by coordinating with scientists who focus on water filtration on developing the mixtures, testing the physical prototype with more materials, and doing market testing to see how responsive this product would be in use.
SERVICE IMPLEMENTATION VIA A DIGITAL PLATFORM
A DIGITAL TOUCHPOINT TO DEMONSTRATE HOW THE VODA SYSTEM WORKS GEOGRAPHICALLY
We developed a digital platform to host multiple functions of the VODA experience (to start: ordering and product onboarding and education). We felt that to compete with the other filtration systems we needed to have a similar distribution channel. This also afforded us with the capability to properly explain how the system works for newer users and understand how to make tap water drinking feel safer.