simple shower

Class project focused on transforming the results of a previous project focused on fast concept generation (H2SHOW, found here) into a focus on iterating on a single design concept. Problem space taken from the 2009 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference's student design competition.

Collaborators: Susan Coleman-Morse, Lorelei Kelley, Joseph Yelochan

problem space

Water shortage has been a concern of arid regions of the world for many, many years. However, with recent technological innovations, humans have been able to redirect the flow of water from large lakes and other reservoirs across great distances. This has become a problem in the Western United States, as well. For instance, Lake Mead in Nevada has seen a precipitous drop in water level over the past few years since its water has been siphoned off to other parts of the U.S.

Because of such siphoning, areas that have typically enjoyed a plentitude of water are in danger of losing their renewable water sources. Further compounding this is water usage trends of American home- and apartment-dwellers. The number one activity that consumes water in American households is showering. So, rather than deny arid areas water, we planned to design a way to help American citizens reduce their water usage to the point where water could be siphoned sustainably, and we decided to begin with the shower.

core of the problem

Many American apartment renters do not have incentive to change their behavior. Simple awareness of the water situation is not enough to change their behavior; instead, they must have tools that intuitively support sustainable water consumption.

prototyping

We constructed and tested multiple prototypes for the Simple Shower. The first prototype was built in high-fidelity, meant to evaluate the actual interaction of the sliders along the shaft. The second prototype was built at a lower fidelity, and was aimed at prototyping the actual flow of using the shower knob, rather than just the interaction metaphor.

concepts (click to expand)

			Final, presentation-grade sketch of the simple shower model.