HOT TEA MAKER FOR AN AND END-TO-END MARKET
In 2015, a review of the consumer beverage market saw the possible rise in demand in developed countries for tea. Recognizing the growth of the coffee industry in the past, I set out to challenge myself to design a concept consumer electronics-based tea maker, while still considering the needs for all participants in the tea trade. This meant more than developing a robust self-heating tea maker, but positioning it into a product stream, considering the farmers who produce the tea itself, ensuring that they would not fall into the same agricultural pitfalls that the coffee industry immersed many of these producers into. This consumer electronics sustainability project was approached in two phases. The design of the device itself, using design for manufacturing principles and leaning on a traditional sustainable methodology of focusing on a robust design to keep as many of its components out of the waste stream as possible for as long as possible. The second phase is studying and acknowledging the farming practices and changes tea producers undergo to ensure a profitable business, and proposing new culturally appropriate practices, to ease financial transition and minimize further damage to the environment in tea-producing regions.
PHASE 1
-DEVELOP PRODUCT WITH MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS
-REFINE FOR EASE OF ASSEMBLY
-REFINE FOR SUSTAINABILITY
PHASE 2
-MARKET RESEARCH TO LAUNCH CAMPAIGN
-ADAPT LOCAL CULUTRE AND SCALE UP TO MARKET PRODUCTION
-CULTURAL CONNECTION FROM TRIBAL AMAZON TO WESTERN CONUMER
-DEVELOP NECESSARY PRODUCT INTO AGRICULUTRAL CYCLE
-ENHANCE PRODCUT FOR ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION
-ADAPT PRODUCT TO BE UTILIZED MEDICINALLY
Design is more than just creating a cool product. I have come to learn a well desinged product will impact peoples lives. But how far could I take it? How big of an impact can a single product make? This was my aim to find out.
I spent time in the Amazon in 2012 and while there I learned about how the locals would grow fine herbs in the rainforest and how they learned to use these to regrgow deforested parts of the Amazon. The locals called these gardens Chakras.
