Lessons From Trying to Prove a Concept

Our Re:Studio class operating as a startup this semester. As a class, we will take a concept from idea to launch in the space of a semester. Currently, we are in small groups working on individual concepts that we will eventually pitch to the whole class. We are in the middle of the prototyping process.

Previous to this project, I always thought that prototyping involved a program on my computer (Sketch, Invision, Framer, etc.), wires and LEDs (hellooooooo Arduino), or at least some cardboard and glue (prototyping craft time!). So, in our first week of prototyping, that is automatically where our minds went — we were ready to pull out the Arduino kits and jump into wireframing for a possible companion app.

We thought we had the perfect solution for our problem area, which was to bring about awareness around water waste in American households. Our proposed solution was a faucet, shower head, or attachment that would light up to give you a passive indication of how much water you were using. It would also push data on your household water use to an app to allow you to make goals and track your water usage.

About the time that we were planning out that week’s prototyping was when we realized that we needed to pump the brakes on the physical product prototyping. We were making some big assumptions here. First off, that people in general cared about their water usage to the point of buying a new fixture or what could potentially be a bulky attachment to add to their faucet or shower head. Also, we were assuming that people would want an app on their phone to tell them about water usage. Sure, in our research, people said that they did care and wanted to have that info, but how could we know that people would take the effort to open an app? Or that they would take data and change their behavior for the better?

Hmm… we hadn’t even started prototyping and we were already shooting ourselves in the foot with our assumptions.

So, we needed to back up. How do we prove the viability of our concept? And what was at the basis of our concept anyway? It took lots of thinking, questioning, and challenging each other and the assumptions we were making.

And now, as we approach the end of our second week of prototyping, I have yet to make a single wireframe in Sketch. I also have yet to mess with sensors, circuits, or cardboard. But, I have also learned a lot. And my group as a whole has only gained more and more confidence in our solution to the problem of water waste in homes.

How have we gone about trying to prove the viability of our concept? We have timed our showers and set timers to push ourselves to reduce our water usage. We have asked friends and family to do the same. And then asked them to fill out a survey to get their water data for the week (in an effort to replicate whether people would take the effort to get their own data). We have tested water use with videos that change color according to how much water people are using.

And we have found that these sorts of reminders have an effect. It might just be that water isn’t considered a precious resource for most people in this country, but it seems like people just don’t really think that much about how much water they’re using. Sure, at the end of the month, when they get their bill, the idea might cross their mind that they should try to use less, but quite often in the moment, people don’t have a real gauge of how much water is going down the pipes.

Personally, I have cut my shower time in half. In half! That’s big. And it’s our hope that we can get this product to a point where we can help other people save water also. More to come…