Collapsibles is a collaborative project focused on creating sustainable alternatives for food packaging. By leveraging our diverse set of skills we were able to design CHILL, a reusable can carrier that was created with the goal of reducing the environmental impact of single use six pack rings.
Dimitri Stetsenko
Rahul Patel
Morgan LaMarca
Beginning with our own personal experiences with food packaging and building off of qualitative data from our peers and industry experts, our key takeaways were the following points:
- Single use, unsustainable materials are everywhere
- Many designs aren’t compatible with current recycling practices
- End users expect utility, often for free, at the cost of long term environmental damage
Initital question:
How might we reduce single use waste in food packaging?
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Interviews were conducted on our intended customer base in order to determine how they felt about the products they used, and what they would like to see in a sustainable alternative.
When you’re shopping, what are the main factors that determine what products you purchase?
Ex. convenience, cost, brand name, packaging
Let’s say you have to buy beer for a party. Walk me through the process you would go through to buy them. Ex. Where are you shopping, what brand are you buying, and why?
Does a carrier design affect which beverage you purchase? If so, what do you look for when you are purchasing canned beverages in terms of transportation of the item?
To counteract any biases that might affect our active interviews, we conducted passive direct observation to understand user choices in a more anonymous manner. Each of our group members individually went to different grocery stores and documented our findings.
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★ Brand name and user familiarity with a product is important
★ Users want packaging that is easy to carry over long distances
★ When buying drinks, consumers will go to large stores that have multiple options available
★ Users would pay more for a product that is reusable and offers additional features
★ Majority of beverages sold in California are sold in bulk and packaged in cardboard boxes with handles on the sides
Based on the insights gained from user interviews, the team created personas and journey maps, such as the ones show below, to envision the canned drink purchasing process. The use of personas helped identify pain points and shortcomings of current solutions and processes.
To conclude our initial round of user research, we condensed all of our findings into a value opportunity chart that would serve to guide our ideation process and keep us focused on user's needs and desires. The chart also highlights the main criteria that our product will focus on achieving over competitors.
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Before starting the selection process, we revisited and reaffirmed our key user insights to better guide our decision making. From there we used a concept positioning chart, dot voting, weighted matrices, and elimination based on team interests to cut down the concepts until six final ideas were left.
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Shown below are a few key designs that ultimately led to our final high fidelity prototype. Each team member took on designing one to two prototypes and fielded questions from our target user base.
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A 3D model of our final design is shown above, with our prototyping process is shown below. Our can carrier features four collapisble can holders that interface with a rail system. Each holder is removable, doubles as an insulating beverage cooler, and accommodates various drink sizes due to its orgami inspired geometry. The collapsible nature of our product makes it incredibly easy to store and very versatile.
The materials used in our prototype are 3D printed polylactic acid (PLA) and a laser cut plastic sheet; however, our market-ready design would utilize high density polyethylene (HDPE) recovered from the ocean for the rail, and a cornstarch derived elastomer to serve as the collapsible beverage holder.
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VALUES
Sustainability + Affordability + Durability
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