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Project hydr. was designed during my fifth and last year at Strate - School of design. It was created to answer the problematics brought up in my master thesis about failure. hydr. aims to encourage a different way of using water, a more intuitive, more efficient, more natural way, by using gestures to inform new ritual usages.

Should we learn from our failures?

In my thesis, I addressed the concept of failure. Going beyond the binary of whether failures should be studied at all, I interrogated this topic through history, geography, law, philosophy, psychology and education, in order to question the extent to which learning and failing can cohabit.

 

From psychoanalysis, I tracked a recurrent behaviour in people incapable of learning from failure : repetition. Using the example of addiction, I illustrated how repeating an excessive behaviour constitutes proof that failure was not a source of knowledge. This led me to the following problematic: 

 

How can I, as a designer, manipulate an ecosystem in order to avoid excessive behaviour repetition?

Over-consumption

excessive behaviour identified

Domestic water

consumption identified

hydr. is placed in the context of the over-consumption of a valuable resource: water. Easy access to that commodity, perceived as «unlimited» in Western countries, is the result of placing on the market economic solutions  that free people from guilt. An appetite for excessive comfort inevitably leads to overconsumption, which is increased in places such as hotels, where our water consumption has no personal economic impact. On average, an individual consumes two to six times more water in one night at a hotel than their daily water use average. To offset this excess, hydr. uses nudge techniques to allow the user to take responsibility through their habits. They are prompted to turn off the water when it is not needed, and to optimise their shower time proportionally to water consumption. 

consumed during

a 5min shower

shower: 

irresponsible consumption

shower also consumes

power to heat water

Facts:

technologies 

freeing from guilt

objects adapting

to behaviours

indirect

awareness

Existing solutions are:

Design a shower system that encourages responsible behaviours through new customs and usages regarding water consumption.

// facilitated gesture : pick up / hang up

Inspired by our old wall phones, the water starts to flow when the shower head is taken off the mixer-support, and conversely, hanging it back cuts off the water supply through internal valves controlled by magnetisation. In addition, the ring-shaped shower head inwardly concentrates the water flow, thus providing different options for use with a single flow rate. This form also serves to highlight a visual indicator  on the mixer-support, powered by the water flow, showing whether a consumption level is reached. In addition to being a unique experience, it provides significant economic and environmental benefits.

// inward concentric & mono pressure hose

// picking up reveals the temperature ring

// light indicator visualizes the consumption

// water evacuation

// Strate - School of Design, Paris

// Dyson showroom, Paris

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