The story of bottled water

"Our world is a world obsessed with stuff. We are a system in crisis. we are trashing the planet, we are trashing each other and we are not even having fun. The good thing is when we start understanding the system we Start to see lots of places to step in and turn these problems into solutions"

Bottled vs. tap water. Is it cleaner? Is it just a scam?

Many of us are sucked into buying 'fresh' bottled water from big companies such as pepsi but what most people don't realise is that 1/3 of Americas bottled water comes from the tap and more shockingly is that these companies are charging more that 2000 times the cost of tap water. On average America buys half a billion bottles of water a week.

So how do these companies do it?

The process is called 'manufacturing demand'. This process is split into three parts:

• scaring us
• seducing us
• misleading us

At the start the idea was to make the people feel scared about drinking tap water. Fiji were the first to put this idea forward by using the cleveland campaign with their slogan "because its not bottled in cleveland". this was a massive failure because the cleveland people tested the water and found it was of less quality, people liked the tap water more and it costs about 2000 times more.

"when we're done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes"

A nestle executive stated " bottle water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world" This statement is insane. These companies are trashing the world through there immense manufacturing stages. How is that environmentally responsible. The fuel and energy put into making these bottled is wasted as we finish the bottle in about 5 minutes.

Are they really being recycled? most of the time they are being down cycling making products which will end up in landfill faster then bottles.

Pepsi's VC stated "The biggest enemy is tap water"

"Its time we take back the tap" and say no to bottled water.

How can we spend the billions of dollars spent on bottled water every year? some real solutions presented to us in the video were invest in public water infrastructure, prevent pollution and drink from fountains.

Design excellence poster

The 'Quest duo' is a Compact handheld sales and payment device for the retail and hospitality industries.

David Kelly: Human centred design

David Kelly shares his experience in design by showing how design has changed mainly focusing on products. Kelly describes how something has happened in the last few years where we have climbed Maslow's hierarchy a little bit and we are now focussed more and more on human centred design. In saying this he comments that we are now designing behaviours and personalities into products making designers job more enjoyable.

We are now moving towards getting more and more products at an earlier stage in motion and showing how they will be used. He describes them as more experienced prototypes.

He shows how this has been done through projects he has been involved and influential in. One of these examples is the new Prada store in New York. Kelly has successfully created a cultural retail store which engages the client to experience and interact with the items being bought and displayed. This is achieved by large multiple touch screens where the item can be scanned and displayed on screen where the user can interact with the item of clothing in many different ways such as colour, size and seeing the item on the cat walk. other interactions include a delayed mirror to see what you look like as you turn in the change room.

Another example of human centred design is seen at the London science museum. The human interaction comes through a interactive wall based on the subway system. the wall is 4 stories tall and displays guests reviews and thoughts on there experience whilst in the museum.

Kelly also worked on scott adams ideal cubicle for iconic cartoon character Gilbert. There where many ideas put forth and the designers experienced working in cubicles whilst on the project. The main idea put forth was the make the cubicle living and more human centred. This was achieved by having interactive cubicle walls (e.g fish bowls and pushing bags) and having products that when in their surrounding act differently such as a flower that wilts when you leave and comes back to life and greets you when your back.

Another great design was the london domes 'Greenwich water cycle pavilion' . The pavilion was designed to celebrate and express the importance of recycling. The pavilion interacts with running water and rotating pannels so you can see the process and info of the recycling process.

David Kelly's public debut of the 'Spyfish' was an interesting design concept where you can practically scuba dive without being in the water. The submarine tele-presence vehicle has two cmeras and is controlled via a wireless remote control. The idea was so that you can through the mini vide sub over the side of your boat and see whats under and around you.

The final design shown in Kelly's presentation was an inspiring story of how design can change the world and peoples lives. Dr Martin Fisher went to Kenya and started a non profitable organisation called Approtec. The idea behind this was that there are entrepreneurs everywhere in the world so there must be some in Kenya. He was totally correct and started with the organisation 19,000 companies and 30,00 new jobs. This has resulted to the sales of 0.6% of the GDP in Kenya. One of Approtec's most successful products is the deep well manual pump which enables people to grow crops in the off season.

Thanks to this new concept of designing personalities and behaviours into products and designs, designers are more trusted and integrated into business strategies giving the designer more control and freedom.