Paladai Bottle- Tupperware project

•

For my seventh semester in college, I worked under Slabs.

This project's client was Tupperware and we had to come up with designs of baby care products.

Following is the process and final work of the entire semester. Kindly leave your feedback. Thank you.

PROJECT BRIEF

The project- Tupperbaby, aims to explore products or services for children between the ages of 0-4 years through a human centric approach. The direction of the project is for the Indian market in general and for young urban Indian millennial parents in particular.
• For baby products (0-9 months), they want to focus on products with penetrative low cost pricing and competitive advantages such as ease of use, cleaning, and sterilizing.
• For the toddler segment (9 - 48 months), the interest is around the drivers for the parents’ purchase decisions such as cost, cleaning, storing, on-the-go and ease of use for adults and kids.

The client’s interest was in achieving the above by:
• Simplifying the process of using child care products for upper-middle class consumer.
• Establishing and increasing product offerings in this category.
• Amplifying brand trust.

Designs had to be focused around simple usage, functional relevance, wow factors, a credible demonstration, design story, latest technology, appropriate results along with relative affordability. The basic aim was to genuinely making things better for the caretakers.
From analyzing and understanding the brief, the team of nine industrial designers came up with a vision statement- ”Make Tupperware the quintessence of baby care.

PROCESS

Over a period of almost seven weeks, the team worked on understanding the user, the market and needs of the user.
The secondary research involved understanding child care processes, stakeholders, traditional practices, values in children products and drivers for parents to buy these products.

The competitive analysis involved going out and looking at the products existing in the market. The kinds of brands and products available gave a brief idea of the competition.

Further on, for our primary research, we interviewed almost thirty parents from different cultural background and different parts of the country. We broadly divided our interviews into three categories-
>Plastic users/ Non-plastic users
>Specific products users/ General product users
>Convenience driven/ Perfection driven

Following this, we created three personas that elaborately described the kinds of possible users.
We gathered insights from our interviews and recognized gaps and pain points. This helped us define opportunity areas from which we would individually derive our concepts and design our product.

The six opportunity spaces are:
On the go, preparation, engaging, tradition, monitoring and transition.

CHOSING OPPORTUNITY SPACE

I chose tradition as my opportunity areas. Our target group was the Indian millennial parent and thus tradition was something that played a huge role in childcare. Most Indian families have a certain set of traditional practices and beliefs that they follow. When there is a logical explanation to them, more parents are willing to follow them. But parents shy away from these practices when they cause any kind of inconvenience. My aim was to combine traditional practices and modern lifestyle to design products that would allow parents to utilize the positives of tradition while maintaining values like functionality, convenience and efficiency.

The two traditions I decided to incorporate in my product were:

1. Using Silver utensils for children
> Some prople use Silver because of its anti- bacterial properties.
> It is believed that using Silver utensils, transfer some minerals into the food and to the baby which are beneficial.
> The idea of being born with a silver spoon sets a social standing for the child and the family.

2. Paladai/ Jhinook/ Bondla/ Khopi/ Oil lamp
> It is a method of feeding that causes less colic (compared to bottle feeding).
> It is advised by doctors in cases of premature births or when the infant is unable to breast feed.
> Sometimes it is used in order to avoid nipple confusion which happens if the baby is bottle fed before being breast fed.

THE PALADAI BOTTLE (0-6 months)

SCENARIO: Surabhi lives with her in-laws, her husband and her 2 month old daughter. Her in-laws are very traditional and have been asking Surabhi to use a silver Paladai they bought for her. Surabhi is a practical person and needs a reason for why she should use the paladai. Her husband explains to her that paladai causes much less colic and that silver has anti-bacterial properties. Though she is now ready to follow this practice, she is reluctant to use it because it is tedious, timetaking and not something her maid could use.
Inspired by the form of a paladai, a milk bottle that gives the benefits of a paladai in a convenient
and modern manner.

The front of the bottle is designed like a paladai, since the core essence of a paladai is its form. First I took the existing form of a paladai and analysed its design and possible pain points. Then it had to be adapted to the form of an attachment to milk bottles- retaining the values of existing milk bottles.
This bottle is designed to be used by the parent for the child. To use the bottle, the parent has to hold the bottle and feed the child (like in paladai feeding). The bottle is designed in a manner that the angle of tilt is minimized while feeding.

>Three part product, with removable and changeable paladai attachment.
>The openning for the milk into the paladai spout is a 2mm cross slit, enough to allow milk to be pushed out.
> The upper limit volume of feed for a 0-6 month child is around 250ml. The volume of the bottle shall be roughly 275ml

ABOUT THE PRODUCT

This product is a blend between traditional practices and modern lifestyle. The essence of the Paladai bottle is the Indian traditions that have been incorporated in it- Using a paladai to feed a child & using silver utensils for feeding.
In our lifestyle- or as a matter of fact, in life- we want convenience and efficiency with reason and functionality. This product has all of these values. With benefits of traditions, it is designed to be more convenient and efficient. It carries most values of a milk bottle and has added benefits.
The Paladai bottle has been designed to be used for an infant aged 0- 6 months, but to be handled
by a parent. The process of using this bottle involves the parent spurting out milk into the paladai spout and then tipping the milk into the child’s mouth.

WHY TO USE THIS PRODUCT?

For parents that are not keen on the traditional aspect of the product, the selling point would be its property to reduce-colic.