Frustrating Process

It was hard in the beginning to come up with ideas. It was like trying to shoot fish in a lake- with a double barrel shotgun- your odds are extremely low. Professor Wales has redirected our process. Saying that we need to find a need and then respond to that need has been a much more efficient way to approach this class. There are a lot of needs in society, but one that has been a constant is the environment. Everyone wants to take care of the environment and there are so many ways we can think about this. By coming up with a list of problems and a list of solutions, we can try to come to improve current solutions and try to think of new solutions. Last night I saw a taping of The Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert is a genius. He flows effortlessly from one topic to another, educating his audience in ways that are so entertaining that people hardly know they are learning. If we can educate our consumer and entertain them at the same time- we could be bigger than Stephen Colbert (probably not though).

Consumer Pain

As we progress in this time of industrial mayhem, one consumer pain that will become much more prevalent over the next few years is the pain of hurting the environment and ourselves. Even skeptics would say that the environment is changing for the worse and human health is always an issue, especially in the 21st century with the technological advances such as video games and fast food chains. With that in mind, there is a growing national trend that being environmentally friendly is "cool" and "hip." Every little thing that someone can do to save the environment helps. Water is and will always be the most essential ingrediant to healthy bodies. Americans use over 10billion water bottles a year, which is not only bad because making the plastic uses a lot of oil, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere but if it isn't disposed of correctly, it is a waste of plastic. They are also proven to be bad for peoples health being that plastic can leak into the water and damage the precious inner organs of human bodies. The alternative, tap water, is also at times unsanitary, unhealthy, warm or bad tasting. For these reasons, we intend to create a environmentally friendly water bottle with a built in water filter. This fulfills the consumer pain with crisp, fresh, environmentally friendly water wherever there is a tap.

Ideation process

Since I was young, I have always come up with ideas that I thought would solve a consumer pain. I always had these elaborate thoughts on ways to make typing easier, or how to eat food quicker or even ways to organize files better. I shortly realized after starting this class that ideas do not necessarily mean they are good.

Though it is relatively easy to "ideate", it is not as easy to come up with a feasable, working plan. Our group has worked hard trying to find the next google but after thinking long and hard about ways to make everyones life just a little easier, we realized it is much tougher than we thought.

We were very shocked when the ideas that we liked were shot down by Professor Wales as not being thought out enough or not being a big enough audience. Those critiques, however, allowed us to start thinking about other products in our domain (environment) and we finally came up with an idea that just may work...Filtra!

Shower Power

Shower power seems like a decent idea. Not only does it have to be on the shower. How about the sinks in the house? Maybe a meter in the car?

Shower Timer

This small water proof gadget would hang in your shower and tell you how calculate how long your shower is running as well as how many gallons of water you are using.  It would serve as a relatively sobering calculator of how much water you are wasting on a daily basis.  Our target market would be environmentally conscious people who are trying to save water, and this would be one way they could do that.

Facebook for companies

 We would provide a social network where people could log on and be connected to other CEO's and employee's of companies all over the world.  This connection would allow every employee, manager and CEO to learn from one another.

More Filtra

I just spoke to my environmental studies Professor, Kim Marsella, and she LOVED the idea of a filtered water bottle. At home, she filters her water on the tap and every morning comes to Skidmore with a bottle of her filtered water but when she runs out, she doesn't refill it because she doesn't like the water. With Filtra, she would be able to have water anytime she wants, and as she is pregnant, the more water in her system the better.

She also gave me links to the Food and Water watch which advocates for not using bottled water. That link is here. http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/bottled

After doing some other research however, I also found the problems with tap water, which can be found here. http://www.purwater.com/#/contaminants.

Being that there are problems with both bottles and tap, Filtra will be able to target both of those markets and create an environmentally friendly bottle with safe, refreshing water in it.