How We Work
BACKGROUND /
What are the difficulties ?
Our client is a beer keg rental company based in Australia with over 120,000 kegs. The kegs are expensive assets priced around US$100 each, but over 10% of kegs go missing every year. The loss of high-value assets impacts their profits, but existing methods of RFID and QR code scanning are costly and inefficient as each keg has to be scanned individually when moving from venue to venue. If anyone fails to scan the kegs, there will be gaps and lags in the system, leading to inefficient resource allocation.
DISCOVER /
What can we do for our client ?
If we need to dig deeper into their pain points, the Service Blueprint is exactly an important design method to map out components of the service experience and help us get a ground overview. So, I have listed a actions process in terms of rental customer to learn HOW the service happens.
There are two crucial touch points we have noticed, one is “receiving full kegs” and the other is “returning empty kegs.” Both of them affect the keg visibility. We also found it went undetectable during delivery. And the storage time impacts the quality of beer in brewer. The pain points are summarized as follows:
Scan and check manually. Incorrect invoices and litigations happen.
No visibility on kegs including location, temperature and period.
Kegs stay on much longer than required.
We can clearly see that the beer kegs are truely a typical case of IoT applications, thus we would address these pain points through asset tracking with designing a tracker on it to realize three main orientations:
Towards end-to-end visibility across supply chain.
Improve customer service and product quality.
Increase asset utilization.
FOCUS /
Requirement definition
After problems discovered, our client and we had defined some practical requirements together for this tracker to respond to the design orientations before I started the next ideation stage:
Flexible mounting system
An installation solution to fit different liters of kegs with various round surfaces
Keg behavior detection
Control the keg utilization through detect geolocation, movement and temperature
Impact resistance
Able to resist frequent shocks during delivery
Antenna performance
Good connection ensures good data transmission for tracking capability
Water resistance
Waterproof kegs when it is placed outdoors
Battery status indicator
Provide a reminder before power runs out to avoid disconnection
DEVELOPE /
How did we implement it ?
Based on the requirements, we had have a basic direction to start the ideation stage. However, we believe that the key point is to confirm the mounting system at first. Because it will impact whole product performances afterward, including form factor, inside placement, resistant abilities and user experience.
Failed double-sided tape solution
Regarding the installation, we came out the easiest idea of double-sided tape at beginning. Then we did some simulations on a dummy device by different thickness and layers with kinds of adhesive strength.
Unexpectedly it was torn off after pushing test. We supposed its uncontrollable round surface truely impacts the adhesive strength a lot. So we should find another way to overcome it.
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Brainstorming and sketching
Since the double-sided tape solution did not work, I led a brainstorming workshop to generate some new installation solutions. Through some discussion with Product Manager and some engineers, we were going to choose and propose the most reasonable and workable one among three idea concepts.
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Features delivery
Round and compact
A compact enclosure is presented with smoother boundaries and no sharp features which could be damaged easily. And we can see an efficiently utilized space inside through the exploded view.
Effective user experience
The indicator is only visible by passing light through the case when power is about to run out. It ensures to be impact and water resistance while maintaining a clear look. Additionally, the position of NFC activation is presented with an embossed icon.
