The Hydrone

Background

The 2015-2016 Design & Innovation classes worked with CamelBak, an outdoor equipment company, throughout the year on design projects.

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Working with the Lead Industrial Designer from CamelBak, the students were given the broad topic of "Hydration in Team Sports."

Choosing a design area

One team, made up of three seniors, decided to focus on two particular aspects of team hydration: the timing of hydration, and the sidelines during competitions.

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Timing

• Starting the day of an athletic event, when does hydration actually occur?
• How much time does hydration take throughout the day?
• Is practice different than competitions?

Sideline

• What are the starters (active players) doing when they come off the field?
• What are the subs (inactive players) doing?
• Where does the water come from and where is it located?

Ethnographic (in-context) research

Students go out to the locations in which their activity takes place and they observe and interview real users.

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Analysis & Insights

The team identified a handful of trends that were not initially obvious.

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• Correlation between talent, work ethic and hydration habits
• Varies across sports (e.g. emphasized in cross country)
• Viewed as important, yet behavior does not back this up
• Water that is provided is always used
• Requires work before athletic event
• Lack of hydration education in high school athletes

Feedback from stakeholders

The class presented their research and analysis via video conference to the CamelBak team.

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The Lead Industrial Designer, William Gordon, and his team offered students critiques and suggestions on how to improve and implement their ideas.

Ideation sketches

Each group was required to develop numerous ideas for each problem statement they generated.

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These pictures show a variety of sketches addressing problem statements the Hydrone group developed. The sketches include digital, physical and social solutions to challenge the students to think outside of their comfort zone.

Early conceptual prototypes

After some simple evaluation of the sketched ideas, the students created rapid physical prototypes of their ideas.

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These prototypes are useful conversation starters that were used to get feedback from potential users and interested parties.

Prototypes with increasing fidelity

As they began to hone in on a few solutions, prototypes were developed with more and more realistic features.

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These videos show the progression of the technical side of the solution (having a drone carry water) as well as the progression of the user experience (how does a user interact with the drone?).

Presentation to stakeholders

The group traveled to Petaluma, CA to show their work to the CamelBak Design team.

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See the above video for more information on the trip.