Design a better water bottle.

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Design a better water bottle.

Asked at Meta (Facebook) over a year ago

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Lokesh Kumar R · Answer 1 · 2021-05-30T15:48:25+0000

Since the question is pretty vague, I would like to make it a bit more clearer before jumping onto the answers.

I would like to assume that by "watter bottle" we mean the bottles that one can easily carry with
Are we a part of facebook trying to aachieve this or a separate organisation? You can assume that it is Facebook.
What goal are we trying to achieve through this? We are just planning to improve the physical health of our employees and trying to achieve this by making them take more water.
Do we have any constraints for this project? No, We have no constraints be it financially or time wise.

With the above understanding, I would like to proceed further.

I would like to think from a user's perspective by understanding their types and their needs before designing a new bottle as that'll help me think from their shoes more effectively.

Employees who are gym freaks
Employees who are normal folks with least health consciousess
Employess who are highly health conscious.

Of these I would like to prefer the 2nd category. This is because when you consider the 1st case, they tend to follow their own diet plans and take water in sips to have their muscles in shape. While the third are highly critical about what they have and always make sure to stay healthy in terms of intake of nutrients and water level.

Next, the needs/ pain points of those users would be

They often would forget to make sure to consume 3-4 litres of water and as well as refilling it at the right time.
Not aware of when to take water and how to take it. For example, consuming water at a faster rate and larger quantitites at a stretch will be of no use to the person
Some are highly preferential about the quality and the temperature of the water that they take.

Of these listed things, I would like to choose 1and 3 as the impact of addressing those are high than the 2nd one. So is the reach to 1 and 3 compared to 2.

Solutions:

We could make a bottle that has a sensor within it which measures the temperature and maintains it as per the user's choice. The sensor could be associated with a mobile app that shows the temperature and the app could also be used to maintain a temperature as per the user's choice.
We could come up with a band that functions similar to a Oximeter and reads the level of Water Content in the body and alerts the user through vibration in real-time to remind them to take water when it is low. The Band also connects to the Sensor in the bottle to learn the quantity left in the bottle and remind the user to refill that as well.
We could come up with a bottle that measures the amount of water taken by the users and gives a streak score to them. This score could be used to rank people in a ranking table and thus introduce a game and competitive nature to the water drinking tendency.

Of these 3 solutions, I would like to prioritize the 2nd one. This is because, the 3rd though creates a competitveness and influences people to intake water more the impact and reach might not enough as people might tend to ignore the simple ranking. While solution's alignment to the goal of imrpoving the health would be achieved more by 2nd than 1.

Summary

The question was to design a better bottle. Through the discussion we came up with a goal of improving the health conditions of FB's employee by helping them take more water through a better bottle. We plan to achieve that by making a band that alerts the user when the water quantity is low in the bottle and remind the users to refill it and as well as alert them when the water quantity is low in their body.

AG · Answer 2 · 2021-05-26T15:50:42+0000

I am proceeding assuming no help on clarification questions

Here are certain assumptions:
a. The goal of the product can be assumed to be around offering better product experience to improve market share by launching a redesigned water bottle

b. I will make the assumption that the company planning this, has no resource constraints and has been designing standard drinking water bottles for users

c. I will go one step ahead to assume that we are redesigning the water bottle to improve the water drinking habits of consumers (can be a marketing pointer to enhance market share)

I will proceed with defining some users along with their pain points who are looking to improve their water drinking habits

a. Fitness enthusiasts -

1. Aim to drink 3-4L of water daily as part of their workout regimes but can forget to drink from time to time

2. Find complications around carrying water while running or working out

3. Bottle cleaning - Often people forget to clean bottles from time to time and can contact infections (Rare but possible)

b. Desk workers -

1. Stagnant with no presence of water around them and may forget to drink water - General dehydration is higher in office workers due to air conditioning

2. Water consumption around meals - People generally need to drink water in +/-30 min intervals of eating. As it's a hassle, most people end up drinking water immediately and suffer from digestive challenges

3. Drinking water preference - Some people like warm water or cold water depending on temperature setting but may not be able to find water with desired temperatures

I would like to target desk workers and work on redesigning water bottles for them. Here are some recommendations around redesigning a water bottle:
Capacity - Standard
A. Material Modification with sensors - Insulation: Offering a small insulation layer around the bottle can help in maintaining temperature. To add to this, a small display can be added to the cap to ensure users can view the temperature by tapping on the cap. This can solve the drinking water preference pain point for users

B. Water Reminders: The bottle can be embedded with a tech design to enable water reminders.
The water reminders can be set by a predesigned website for users and an account created to uniquely link users to a bottle ID. User can set water alarms for weekdays and weekends can be disabled as desk workers will be unavailable on weekends
Functionality:
a. Once the alarm is triggered, the bottle will silently vibrate to inform users to drink water (Trigger). The alarm can be closed by the user by opening the bottle cap (Action) and an enabled notification can be received by user on the desktop
b. In case of low water, the alarm sound of low decibel can be created to let the user hear about low water level in water or clean bottle (also displayed as message on the bottle cap)
c. The bottle can be supported by a small battery chargeable by normal mobile charging chords to ensure the alarms and display can work

C. Health Recommendations (Add-on): A weekly drinking chart like Fitbit can be sent to users via mail weekly

Bottle can also be offered in different colours based on some market research but standard variants should work

Recommendations:
A is a recommendation that can be easily implemented assuming the company is in the business of designing bottles
B and C may require some technical additions and new resource allocation. This is harder but drives more business value. Both can certainly drive the market share based on usage and effective partnerships with corporate players as part of employee welfare programs

I would prefer to work around with B and C more, as they can offer specific USP to the product offering and can cater to wider user personas as well