Helping California save water
How we explained Flume, Inc. leak detection system.
The story’s simple enough. Flume, Inc., an innovative California-based company, had a cool new piece of hardware out: a smart sensor that attaches to your water meter and lets you know, via an app, if you get a water leak. And because this product was fresh out, they needed a brand new website to tell the world all about it.
So Flume got in touch with us. Right from the start, we knew it was a project for us: this product not only helped Flume’s customers by combining software and hardware in a smart way, but it also did something for the environment, too. Everyone saw that episode of Explained about the world’s water crisis, right?
Knowing that we’d be helping to address an important environmental problem was a real spur for us in this project, and now that the site’s live, it’s an extra source of pride. And now, let’s go backstage and find out a bit more about how we got there…
Goals
Day Zero is coming: the world will likely soon face its gravest water crisis, so it’s about time to start saving water. Flume, Inc. offers a solution: a sensor and software package that identifies abnormal water usage. The company’s mission is to save precious natural resources and customers’ money at the same time. Our task was to build beautiful and functional website to efficiently communicate that goal.
“Zajno was a pleasure to work with! The entire team is professional and produces top-notch, high quality work. We really appreciated Zajno’s transparency and their openness to providing suggestions on how to improve our concepts.”
James Fazio, CTO & Co-Founder at Flume, Inc.
Approach
It was important that the design not look stuffy and corporate: this was not just another product churned out by a large conglomerate, but something designed by a team passionate about solving a particular problem. So we wanted to create feeling an emotion with our site, believing that this would be the way to achieve engagement and trust.
As we often do, we turned to stories: what was the background to the problem being faced, both from the homeowner’s point of view, and the planet’s? How had the guys at Flume become aware of these? What was the process of addressing them? All this was combined with relevant imagery to help add emotional impact.
In our final design we were looking for something clean, free-flowing and functional — and we also wanted it to feel fresh and stand out from the crowd. In more tangible terms, a big part of this eventually came down to thoughtful use of whitespace, helping the viewer focus on what’s important. Our animators also had their part to play, adding movement to the whole ensemble.
Graphics
Though we used a wide variety of imagery to take site visitors on an emotional journey through the product’s story, it was very important to ensure that the images chosen were simple and even laconic, to support the clutter-free, aesthetically-uncomplicated experience we were building. We combined this with a water-drip pattern, used as a linking element to unite the whole site into a single story.
The final result
Our site helps audiences understand the dual benefits of Flume’s product: a solution to a financial problem, and to an environmental one, too. The final site is warm and engaging, while also being calm and reassuring, and it showcases the product’s features and benefits in an accessible way. And as with every Zajno product, if you look under the hood, you’ll see that all the inner workings are purring away smoothly, too.
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