Hathi Home-Brew fermenter + mobile application 2017
A product system for the home-brewer, inspired by the spirit and culture of craft beer and cider.
The Brief
Investigate how a redesign of the small-scale fermenter could use technology to improve its functionality and contents' quality.
A product built specifically for home-brewers should consider both the experienced and the uninitiated, it should enhance and simplify the product, its application and how they are used together. The fermenter is the centrepiece of the brewing process and its digital companion can be just as essential to the brewing community. By centralising this niche social channel and streamlining how they connect, users may benefit from the community's collective knowledge, ever-updating content and the support and enthusiasm of like-minded folk.
Building the Brand
What makes Hathi distinct? If it is how it connects home-brewing with technology, this is what its brand should represent.
The logo unites the fermenter's defining feature with that which defines the IPA (king of craft beers) - the hops flower. The modern style is complimented by a sans-serif with a slight flourish, and brought to life with vivid, natural colours.
Fitting In
Pictured in and out of relief, alone and in its horizontal and vertical orientations, the Hathi logo is classic and colourful, bright and exciting. It is one which wouldn't look out of place in a Bavarian beer hall or a hipster's craft beer label. Fitting for old traditions and new ones, in big batches or the small.
The Userflow
Distinct as they are, designing the fermenter and its mobile application could not be done individually. In mapping out a use cycle, it was essential to consider how the application would interact and compliment the product's.
While the brewing process is the central task the Hathi product system is concerned with, it is important to consider how the application may be used without a fermenter in active use. Browsing content in a recipe book or social channel can serve as a way to engage non-owners and invite them into the community.
The App
Three sections define Hathi's mobile component; the Recipe Book, the Brewing Companion and the Home-Brew Community. This allows users to search and save community generated recipes, monitor their own's progress, share their work and learn from others'.
The Recipe Book
User-centred, user-generated, user-maintained. Community satisfaction and complexity ratings drive discoverability and establish the structure needed to differentiate content. Organised by 'Saved', 'History' and 'New' filters, users are able to store recipes found here or through the social channel, reference and update past concoctions and discover the latest and greatest from the online community.
The Brewing Companion
A simple space to check in on and keep track of brewing progress, reference recipes and be guided from start to finish.
The Home-Brew Community
Build the framework and they will come. While part of what of makes the blossoming craft brewing community beautiful is how decentralised it is, a great opportunity exists in connecting them. By providing a platform for the experienced to share their knowledge and the unexperienced to share their insight, passionate brewers from all corners can connect, find help, learn, capture and share something that cannot be bottled.
The Digital Meets The Physical
The Hathi Home-Brew application and fermenter are connected whether they are paired or not. The application, packed with content as it is, depends on its users' drive to share. It stagnates without fermenter use and ownership. A fermenter needs a competent brewer. Without access to recipes and community insight, the road to good, cold beer is long and arduous.
The Hathi product family can enhance its components' functionality, improve their contents' quality and craft an engaging user experience by working together. And in doing so create a truly worthy home for the home-brewer.
The Past
How glassware is reused is an important part of the home-brewing ecosystem. Most often this is all a fermenter is - a repurposed glass jar or plastic bucket. Resourceful as it is, this presents certain sanitary concerns in a process where sterilisation is key. This is because they reuse items which were not designed for home-brewers. A product which is designed for them should be easy to handle, clean and interact with. It should also be beautiful so that it is not only fit for the indoors, but welcomed into users' homes.
The Thinking
Like mobile applications, it was important to design the fermenter around its key interactions. How would the product be moved when full of ingredients (and thereby heavy, and possibly wet)? Where is the temperature measured? How is it cleaned? Can the brew be easily accessed with a hydrometer or siphon? How does it connect to a phone? How does this enhance the product? Does this enhance the brew?
How these questions of accessibility, maneuverability and simplicity should be answered was worked out through sketching. Key ideas were identified, developed and defined on the page before employing CAD to finalize these design features.
The Technology
Contained in the white plastic housing is the tool that is central to the product system, an infrared thermometer. Contactless in use, the system is able to check its contents' temperature without breaking its seal, eliminating the risk of contamination.
Slow as the fermentation process is, brews often being left bubbling for weeks at a time and only enduring gradual environmental changes, the Hathi fermenter limits its energy usage. With a physical connection to users' mobile devices, the fermenter is able to use it as a power source and encourages users to stay engaged in the process.
The Design Features
The fermenter is designed to be accessible, maneuverable, and beautiful all the while. A wide opening facilitates tasks like cleaning and siphoning, the latter further aided by an asymmetrical profile which isolates residual sediment at its rear. The tank's blow-moulded figure is easily handled by its dimples, improving the ease and accuracy of placement in the tank's wooden base for alignment with the thermometer.
The Legacy
Hathi is meant to foster conversation in more ways than one. Online it is home to a social network, giving users a platform to share their work and connect with the home-brewing community, wherever it is. In the flesh, it is an elegant product not out of place in the open, an outlet for home-brewers to put their passion on display and share with all interested observers.