MaxClean
May 2020 - July 2020

MaxClean

Timeline
May 2020 - July 2020
type
Work Project (Max-Gears)
role
Product Designer
team

Shreyas Kulkarni, Vadiraj Joshi


Context 

Due to the covid outbreak, a nationwide lockdown was announced. During and after the lockdown, every household's economic stability was disturbed, especially for those whose livelihood depended on daily earnings. The government tried its best to help these people by allotting some amount of money, but that wasn't enough. This situation was significantly affecting the wood-working artists who made decorations, artifacts from bamboo, etc. 

These artists belong to very workaholic communities. Money-making was a problem for them, but mental peace was a bigger one. Lockdown was extended to May-June, a marriage season in India, which is also an excellent opportunity for these artists to make money as there are many orders for decorations. Obviously, they lost this market, and it was well predicted that the market for decoration in the Ganapati festival (Sept) was also gone.

At the same time, there was a substantial boom of foot-operated sanitizer stands. Everyone was manufacturing and selling these stands as they were made compulsory by the government for offices or stores. The sanitizer stands available in the market were inefficient and awkward. They were noisy in operation, heavy in construction, and unbalanced; they were made of sheet metal parts, MS/SS tubes of different shapes. While designing these products, not much thought was given to the ergonomics and user experience. 

Purpose/ Problem space

I had a lot of respect for these small artist communities because of their inherent hand-skills. Therefore, I wanted to do something for them. I saw the gaps in the market of sanitizer stands.  Also, I worked with a company that was of medium size with 80-85 workers. Hence, during the lockdown, it was hard to manage all the expenses with no revenue-generation for my company. So, extra revenue would have helped the company to manage the fixed costs. 

I observed that people were buying these systems as a compulsion. They were not happy with their purchases as there was no personal touch or identity to the product. I tapped the gaps in these products and started exploring ideas to fill them. 

Solution space 

I teamed up with my colleagues at work to develop a product. We were initially experimenting with metallic tubes and cables, but I was not happy with the product's experience and aesthetics. \

Ideation Sketches
Experimenting different mechanisms with Metal tubes

Later, one of my friends sent me a video of a product which was made of 4" SS pipe. I liked the form of the product. So, I designed a system with a similar structure. I experimented with foam sheets to figure out the actuation mechanism. While designing, I considered a product's space to add a personal touch to the product, ergonomics, bottle type, and spraying. I finally came up with a product that I was happy with. 

Exploring new ideas though sketching

We designed a product with a PVC pipe, foam sheets, metallic parts, and a bottle with a spray cap. Because the use of PVC cost was dramatically decreased, the functional slots were handcrafted by the artists. We designed the tools using metal plates and plastic sheets for marking. The metallic base kept the center of gravity at the lower side, making the product very stable. We experimented with different dispenser caps of sanitizer bottles and tested the user experience. We decided to go with spray caps because of their convenience while sanitizing. The actuation mechanism was maintenance-free and adjustable.

Actuation Mechanism of the pedal
As it was hard to mark accurate dimensions on PVC pipe, we made these marking tools for artists.
Prototyping the product

Due to the availability of space, personalization was possible for users. We asked some artists to paint over it, and the users well appreciated the results. We also created a kids version.

Final product and use

Implementation 

As we worked in waste management, we knew how difficult it is to recycle PVC. We knew a person who used to collect damaged PVC pipes. Every 17 out of 100 products were made of reused PVC pipes.

We received orders from companies that are concerned about the brand image

Users (especially people who care about the brand image) loved the use of PVC pipes and overall experience of the product; we sold 450+ products in a month. This helped our artist friends a lot and created good revenue for the company too.  

I am delighted that we did something for the people that we cared about.

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