Ebbo

Saving water at home
Timeline | 5 weeks, spring 2020
Tools | Illustrator, Rhino and Keyshot  
Background | This project focuses on young adults between 18-30 living in rental apartments in Sweden. How can we make this target group more aware of their water consumtion?

Collaboration partner

Problem statement

How might we actively reduce waterconsumption at home by raising awareness and valuing water more?

Project goal

The project’s long-term goal is to explore our relationship with water. How willingly are we to cut down on convenience? And can visualisation of water consumption create an impact on our water behaviours?

The project’s more concrete goals are creating a more playful and tangible interaction with the shower’s water. Furthermore, I see this thesis also as an opportunity to learn new things, such as User experience and interface design.

Process
Interviews
User test
Prototyping
Challenges
Year after year people from Western countries usewater more than ever before – without much reflection.Most of the designed showers and taps todaywork like we are in paradise with endless watersources. You use the tap and water comes out asmuch as you want, as long as you want, and for areasonable cost also. That’s, of course, a freedomwe all want. But we need to rethink and redefinethis freedom for the sake of other populations whodon’t have that luxurious access to water. For example,by making water accessible like a vendingmachine. You pay for wate while you consume it.

Result

This project focuses on how we might actively reducewater consumption at home: The outcome is acombination of physical and digital solutions aimingto help the user track and visualise the water theyuse in the shower. The product family name is Ebbofrom ”Ebb och flod”, a Swedish word for tide - therise and fall of sea levels.
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Ebbo contains:
• A wall-mounted clock, enabling the user tomeasure their water consumption
• A meter that the user screws on to the shower tomonitor the water flow
• An app to tracks the water flow and overall theuser’s water use in the shower

KOI
GROW