TEMPO
Research | Product Design | Service System
A bottle for fresh outdoor participants
2 months/thesis design
In collaboration with:
Intro
The project is a concrete practice of my thesis study: design for identity. The final product is a bottle which can serve water at perfect temperature for a longer time than any other bottles on market. Both the function and the appearance is decided by the deep study of the target users, fresh outdoor participants.
What is TEMPO?
Tempo is an innovation vacuum bottle that offers user water at perfect temperature, meanwhile keeps the excess water hot still. People like to use vacuum bottle to keep water hot for a long time, because hot water is limited and precious at outdoor. However, when you are thirsty, water in the vacuum bottle is always too hot to drink. Tempo is born for this problem. With simply turning TEMPO upside down, the hot water will go into a small special designed capsule which allows hot water cool down at less than 90 seconds.
Both the function factor and the shape of TEMPO is not only for outdoor activities, but for daily life at gyms, offices and streets. The idea of TEMPO is from the observation of fresh outdoor participants. So you can take TEMPO to go hiking and camping, and you can also take it to your office to show others your passion for outdoor activities. So we designed the TEMPO to satisfy users need for both outdoor activities and everyday life.
Research Process
Ideation
Why tempo is a better choice
-OFFER YOU DRINKS AT PERFECT TEMPERATURE ANYTIME
-SIMPLEX SHAPE FOR DAILY LIFE
-Easy and quick operation without breaking your tempo.
-SIMPLEX SHAPE FOR DAILY LIFE
-Easy and quick operation without breaking your tempo.
How does TEMPO work?
The idea of TEMPO is inspired by the process of spacecraft docking with space station. For always perfect temperature, you need a small single-layer capsule and a big thermal one. So why not put them in one bottle and design a ‘door’ between two capsules which can allows hot water go into the small single layer capsule. I hope the whole process is easy and intuitive and will not stop you from your movement. So the final design is a bottle that contains a 350ml vacuum thermal capsule and a 70ml single-layer capsule. You only need to turn the bottle upside down with the switch on and the hot water will go into the single-layer capsule. Then switch off the panel by pulling the band and the water will stay in the single-layer capsule and will become at around 55oC within 90’.
When you are moving at a good tempo, you only need to finish the operation within one second and drink water at perfect temperature after 90 seconds.
How it all started
TEMPO is started from the observation of the process of using water containers during outdoor activities such as hiking. In outdoor, everything is limited and need to be took full advantages of. Of course, hot water is among most precious resources that can significantly affect people’s experience. Therefore I focused on every details of using water containers and noticed that outdoor water containers in market, which can be separated into three groups: single-layer bottle, double-layer vacuum bottle and water bags, are not good enough.
So I began asking the question:
What a better water container should be like?
-You want your hot water keep hot for as long as possible.
-You want to drink water at a perfect temperature.
-You don’t want to stop to wait for the water cooling down.
-You want to drink water at a perfect temperature.
-You don’t want to stop to wait for the water cooling down.
So, now when you review all those three water containers on market, you will find that actually you need a double-layer vacuum bottle and a single-layer bottle at the same time. The design of a kind of vacuum bottle which includes a small cup as a cover is an improved solution to the problem. However, you have to stop your movement and wait for the hot water cooling down. This will break your tempos in activities and if you are outdoor participants, you will know how important keeping a tempo is.
Who are TEMPO’s target users?
TEMPO is designed for fresh outdoor participants with concern on their social identity.
Outdoor accessory accompanies are always showing their strong performance in extreme environment, which may work to those advanced outdoor enthusiasts. However, for those new emerging markets such as China, most of the new outdoor participants are far away from those extreme environment. Those function-first products may be popular among the advanced and are introduced to those fresh people for outdoor while they may never have chance use those longest, strongest and largest functions. According to my research with fresh outdoor participants, I get the message that what they want is more than an outdoor accessory. As fresh outdoor participants, they have little interests in those functions for extreme environment. Instead, they prefer wide application range and comfortable user experience. Most of the users prefer to get products not so outdoor-look because they hope it is not so strange for office, classroom or cafeteria, etc.
Therefore, TEMPO focus more on creating better using experience and more simplex shape. The most important factor of TEMPO, offering water at perfect temperature, is also amazing in everyday life for hot drinks such as coffee and tea. In those circumstances, temperature is directly affecting the taste of hot drinks and you, of course, hope every sip will be in perfect taste. Neither the ordinary paper cup, where hot drinks cools down faster than your drinking speed, nor the vacuum mug cannot play such a perfect role as TEMPO.
