BLOOP, HYGIENIC BUBBLE
Today I’m sharing with you my Final Degree Project titled Bloop, developed in collaboration with Quadpack in response to the health crisis caused by COVID-19.
The requirements of the brief was to create a packaging related to colour. In our case, we refused to understand colour as a synonym of make up. So we focused on cosmetic products that could improve the well-being of the user. We would like to point out that our priority was to understand what make us fell well, more than what make us look well. That’s why we started to explore sensoriality, but will be after the experimentation process when we define how to use colour in our product.
The starting point was asking ourselves what make us feel good, and that brings us to the experimentation with textures. Using agar, which is a gelling agent, we proposed new ways to apply cosmetics. The most relevant thing from the process, was to understand the connotations of jelly textures, in order to create a satisfying, fresh and dynamic cosmetic application. But everything changed when we made this kind of bubble that popped and dropped the gel. It reminded us the importance of hand-washing, and we felt that maybe, we needed a product focused on personal hygiene, more than anything else.
We started thinking in the hand sanitizer as a must-have product, but we also asked ourselves: In addition to protect our health, could hand sanitizer improve our emotional well-being?
This painting exercise was a way to visibilize how often we touch our face. A study made in the University of New South Wales, proof that we touch our face 23 times per hour. This unconscious behaviour highlighted how exposed we are to the Covid-19 and other diseases.
Then we worked with the Embodied Design Ideation Methods, which was useful to identify the most accessible zone to wear this new object, in this case the wrist.
Once we identified the most relevant problematic, our intention was to design a capsule that provide hand sanitizer in a playful, user-friendly, reusable
and hygienic way.
Playful
We believe that colour is a refreshing improvement
to avoid promoting the fear to Covid-19.
User-fredly
Our goal was to create something functional,
so it must be easy to carry because we don’t use hand sanitizer at home.
Reusable
Polls have shown that people it’s concerned about sustainability.
So our aim was to create a product that could be daily refilled.
Hygienic
If we understand the capsule as an accessory,
then we can wash our hands without infecting other surfaces.
How does it work? If we want to wash our hands, we just have to apply pressure and collect the liquid in a single gesture. The silicon capsule is designed to be daily refilled, in order to reduce our environmental impact. The addition of colour to the hand sanitizer encourages the user to “get his hands dirty” to ensure that they are clean. To sum up, we used colour to: propose a playful application, visualize the disinfected areas, inspire confidence to the user and the ones who surround him and, finally, to avoid touching our face.
The final proposal introduces a range of colours and scents using citrus fruits as a point of reference. We present four colours, inspired by lemon, lime, orange and grapefruit. The purpose is clear, we wanted to associate hand sanitizer with freshness.
