Ridiculous Contraptions

Pugh Chart

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The Decision
I decided to go with the talking faucet. I feel that the concept could be used for a lot of purposes, from play value to advertising. I can imagine them being used for advertising in restaurants like TGIF or other suburban chains.

Product Names

Talking Faucet
Advercet
Fausome
Faucetvertising
Sinkmantics
Mr. Splashy
Chit-Chat Sink
Ramblin' Plumbin' - Winner!

The Pitch

I apologize for the audio, my camera isn't very good quality.

Previous Versions

Brainstorm

Sketch Model

Favorite Ideas

The ideas that I decided on were mostly ones I have explained before on this blog. Any new ideas, I've given a brief explanation. The ten ideas that I decided to narrow it down to are:
1) Silly straw faucet attachment
2) Sponge faucet attachment
3) Speaking or music playing faucet
4) Faucet attachment that makes bubbly water
5) Pooping bird soap dispenser
6) Steel drum sink basin
7) Sink base foot bath
8) Warm water faucet lever
9) Singing toy to teach kids proper hygiene - A toy that you keep by the sink and has multiple buttons. A kid can press a button and a song plays that sings the steps to properly washing their hands or brushing their teeth while the kid follows the steps. I'm imagining the songs sounding similar to this sketch.

10) Motion sensor temperature control - This would be for automatic faucets in public restrooms. You would be able to change the temperature of water by moving your hands closer to the faucet to make it hotter or colder if you move your hands away from the faucet (towards the basin).

Benchmarking and Market Research
The price range is the range from both market research and from similar products.

Silly straw attachment - $10-$15
When I searched Google for silly straw faucet, my blog was the first thing to show up. I was able to find this very nice glass faucet that has some silly straw properties. I don't think that is similar enough though, since my idea would be plastic and low priced which I'm sure this one is not.

Sponge faucet attachment - $3-$5
The closest idea that I found was from Patent #6,602,010. This patent is for the water sprayer and consistent of both a sponge and liquid soap attachment.

Another idea I was finding was varying sponge shapes that allow it to hook onto the faucet but it is just for storage not for added functionality.

Talking/Music Faucet - $10-$20

My favorite part of benchmarking is the weird videos on youtube that show up.
As far as products, I was able to find this image but no other information but it looks legitimate.

Also, Patent # 7,611,073 outlines a talking water fountain faucet that would have different voices for different characters that the faucet is shaped like.

Water Bubbles - $10-20$
Benchmarking this I was able to find a couple of bathtub faucet attachments that dispense bubble bath solution when water flows through it. I wasn't able to find something like this for a sink faucet.

Pooping Bird Soap Dispenser - $5-$20
I found a lot of pooping candy dispensers that would be very similar to this idea. I also found some very lewd soap dispensers that I would like to post on here but I'm not going to (it involves the Hoff!!!).

Steel Drum Sink - $50-$60
The only thing I was able to find was this slightly bizarre photo showing the exact idea of a steel drum sink. I couldn't find anything else but there is at least one out there.

Foot Bath at Sink Base - $30-$40
I found a lot of different foot baths but none that are build directly into the base of the sink.

Warm Water Lever - $30 - $50
I was able to find expensive faucets that have preset temperature controls built into them. For the most part, they seemed like the automatic faucets in restrooms but more for designer bathrooms.

Learning Hygiene Singing Toy - $10-$30
I was able to find children's books on teaching good hygiene. There are also toothbrushes that play songs for two minutes to encourage kids to brush that long.

Motion Sensor Temperature Control - $40-$50
I wasn't able to find any products that matched this. There are quite a few faucet temperature controller patents and Patent # 11,925,490 is similar. It contains two sensors on the sides of the sink, one for hot and the other for cold. When you wave you hand in front of the sensor, it changes the temperature of the water.

Sketch Models

For the sketch models, I decided on the silly straw, sponge, and the speaking/music faucet attachments.

I wanted to see how a thin flexible plastic for the silly straw would act when water flowed through it.

It would be possible that it wouldn't be rigid enough to keep from splashing water all over. I got some ribbed plastic tubing from a siphon from Axman. I inserted a length of plastic spring to add in some rigidity to the tube. Finally, I glued a bottle cap to the faucet attachment end.

Overall, I felt it worked pretty well. I would like for it to be a little crazier, more loops and twists but the concept seemed to work well.

The second sketch model I made was of the sponge attachment. The idea behind this is that a sponge is attached to the end of a faucet and would allow someone to use it to wash your hands. I though it would be an interesting change to normal hand washing and I wanted to actually try washing my hands this way.

I took a sponge and cut a hole in the inside. In order to attach it to a faucet, I glued a rubber gasket to wrap around the faucet end. When I tried washing my hands with it, I found it cumbersome. Also, the glue that attached the sponge to the gasket only lasted about 15 seconds before the sponge got too heavy and separated.

My final sketch model was testing the works like functionality of the speaking/music playing faucet. I wanted a faucet that would play sounds when the water is running. The method that I wanted to do this was by utilizing the conductivity of the water to complete a circuit read by an Arduino. When the Arduino read that the circuit had been completed (water was running) it would play sound. When the water stopped, so would the sound.

I wasn't sure that the water flowing would actually complete the circuit. After quite of bit of trial and error, I was able to get it working.

I left a couple of extra treats at the end.

I decided to go with the tipping bird faucet attachment that came from the brainstorming session. This idea was kind of narrow for SCAMPER and the idea seemed to expand to the realm of kinetic toy attachments for the faucet. I personally find these ideas to be polarizing; some I really like, others not so much.

SCAMPER

Substitute - Other approach?
This would be an attachment to the faucet that would turn it into a silly straw.

Combine - Combine appeals?
Making a bird faucet that whistles when water flows through it.

Adapt - What different contexts can I put my concept in? (Tipping motion)
A spinning water wheel attachment.

Modify - Change motion?
Water shaking bird. The bird fills up with water and then shakes it off like it would in a bird bath.

Put it to other use - Other uses if modified?
Turning the wings into the hot/cold water valves.

Eliminate - What should I omit?
I eliminated the bird aspect and thought of a drawbridge aquaduct (to still have the tipping motion). It would be upright when the water isn't on, and would fall down to let the water flow out.

Reverse - Consider it backwards?
A pooping bird soap dispenser. Push it down and it shoots out some soap.

Biomimcry

I went up north over the weekend to get my mom's house winterized for winter and while I was there I found myself looking at a fly in the window (fun times in the country). Watching the mouth of the fly made me think of faucet that would extend out when the water was flowing and roll up when it was not. I did a little bit of research and it turns out that this is the proboscis extending out. If you would like to see a bee being harassed for proboscis education, check out the video.

Devo
I think that they might be hitting every element of SCAMPER using the collar.

To start off, I had a hard time getting people together for a brainstorming session. There were a lot of conflicting schedules and last minute cancellations. In desperation, I went to the Students' Co-op that I had lived at for a couple of years. There it is always easy to find a group of people to do something interesting. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a wide variety of ages but at least they were all studying a variety of disciplines. Including myself, there were a total of 6 people: Kevin, Max, Kira, Alexandra, and Charlie.

Before I went I created a preliminary schedule that followed pretty closely to last lecture:
1) Improv warmup
2) Eat candy (very important) and basic brainstorming overview
3) Regular brainstorming session (10 minutes)
4) Negative brainstorm (10 minutes)
5) Roleplaying (2 characters, 5 minutes each)
6) Silent sort (7 minutes)
7) Each person chooses their 5 favorite ideas (5 minutes)

When I got the group of people together, between everyone's schedule we only had an hour to complete everything. I was concerned about having enough time, so, I decided to not do an improv warmup to make sure nobody would have to leave before we were done.

The first brainstorm did not go as well as I was hoping. Everyone was focusing on getting their drawing looking decent and taking up quite a bit of time explaining their ideas. The ideas were all good and nobody was being critical towards others but it was not close to 1 per minute. I went into this brainstorm expecting this to happen, which is why I wanted to do the negative brainstorm after this to get people to feel less inhibited.

The only nonblurry photo I took of the afternoon

The negative brainstorm seemed to go a lot better. The drawings became cruder, as well as the ideas. I really enjoy negative brainstorms and it seemed like everyone else was enjoying this one as well.

The roleplaying brainstorms also went pretty well but there weren't as many ideas being generated as the negative brainstorm.

Top 20 Ideas

These were the ones that got the most votes from everyone along with a few that were my personal favorites. They range from practical to bizarre to humorously sexual.

1. Max - Measures your water usage. If you conserve your water usage, money will be donated to water systems in Africa.
2. Alex - Multiple faucets for different liquids.
3. Me - Water is infused with beads (like orange goop) for cleaning grease from your hands.
4. Me - Faucet that acts like the drinking bird toy when it is flowing.
5. Max - Self explanatory.
6. Kira - Water comes out of faucet and makes bubbles.
7. Me - Water has an additive that cleans your sink (I realized afterwards that Rylie had a very similar idea in a previous post but I like the idea).
8. Alex - Water flow hits parts of the steel drum sink to make different notes.
9. Kevin - Self explanatory.
10. Charlie - Grey water system that washes your feet.
11. Max - Speaking faucet that makes you feel bad about yourself.
12. Max - Revolving sink area that would allow the user to see how the centrifugal forces mess with the water flow.
13. Max - Lasers measure the water level in the sink and project images on the ceiling based on the level.
14. Max - Turns on the faucet when it isn't being used.
15. Me - As the water flows out of the faucet, music is played.
16. Me - Faucet that aims at your crotch and sprays you.
17. Alex - I mainly think this one is too funny not to include in a University assignment.
18. Alex - Sponge attached directly to the faucet to help with washing hands.
19. Max - Warm water faucet lever.
20. Kira - Generates electricity from the flow in the drain pipe.

1) I really like the movable shelves in the Central Library's stack section. Pressing a button to move a whole bunch of shelves just feels so futuristic.

2) I have a strange obsession with whirlpools. I found this one by the McNamara Alumni Center.

1) The lack of bike racks on Nicollet Mall. In most areas the only place to lock up is on a trashcan.

2) Faucets that are too close to the sink wall.
3) Cleaning the coffee maker.
4) Dog hair clogging up the broom bristles.
5) ATM machines that ask three more questions after you get your money before you can get your card back.
6) Dead cellphone battery halfway through your day.

I was having a hard time choosing a specific area that I wanted to explore within the sink/basin theme. I realized that many of the areas were stationary and didn't contain a lot of movement. I've come to the conclusion that products have to have some sort of movement for me to get really interested in them (I guess it makes sense that I went in mechanical engineering). Through this I realized that the flow of water coming out of the faucet is pretty interesting and could have a lot of different areas of exploration, so I chose to look into the faucets of bathroom sinks and, in particular, washing your hands.

Using Bathroom Faucets

Being annoyed with bathroom faucets also happens to be an area that I understand. My current faucet releases the water too close to the wall. This forces the user to have to smash their hands up against the wall of the sink in order to wash your hands. It also prevents you from ever using the large deep basin because your hands are always smashed up against one corner. It's also one of the older models that has a hot spigot and a cold spigot. I have no control over the temperature that I wash my hands at, it is either hot or it is cold. Nothing in between.

Leaves a clearance of 1.03" between the sink wall and water flow. I measured this with calipers because that's how I roll.

I was trying to think of the various residential bathroom faucets that I had used, and nothing really stood out in my mind as being novel. It seemed like they, for the most part, had a very similar design. The standard ones would have one rotating knob or two knobs to control the temperature and were kind of boxy in shape or the designer models were usually made from stainless steel or brass and would have a smooth shape. I decided to head down to the local hardware store and check out the faucets they had.

Ace Hardware!

The selection of bathroom faucets that I found at Ace Hardware seemed to be the same designs of faucets that have been used for as long as I can remember. And exactly how I expected, the inexpensive models had a boxier shape compared to the smooth shapes of the more expensive models.

I'll admit that the selection of faucets here weren't that plentiful. I should probably try to find a designer plumbing store to feel awkward at.

Interview

I came across a couple of employees at the hardware store and used their "May I help you" as an excuse to interview them. I realized afterwards that it's not the best to subtly interview two people at once because one of the salesman didn't really say anything.

I asked them if they had seen or had any interesting faucets. They said that everything they had was pretty much two valves and a spigot. I started throwing out a couple of ideas that might spark their imaginations such as automated temperature control or interesting valves on the faucet. They said they hadn't seen anything like temperature control that directly connected to the faucet but hot water heaters usually had a temperature control. I asked if they thought that something like automatic temperature control on the faucet would be something that might be interesting to the public. They said it would be an interesting idea and that it would be nice if it had instant hot water.

This was about as far as I got with the interview. I'm going to have to practice on my interview questions to get people into a natural conversations but I did this one spur of the moment which isn't always the best way.

Storyboard

My final ethnographic research tool was to create a storyboard. I wanted to follow the steps that someone would use to wash their hands in the bathroom. Since there are many different ways someone might wash their hands, I did a little mind map to come up with variations to the hand washing story. It was with this that I created a choose your own hand washing adventure storyboard:

Journey to the Bathroom

... having destroyed the magician's calliope, you run through the wrought iron lion's mouth and find yourself transported back into your living room. You immediately have an urge to go to the bathroom.
Do you:
Wash your hands (go to 1)
Use the toilet (go to 2)
Shave your ZZ Top beard (go to 3)
Brush your teeth (go to 4)

1
You position yourself in front of the sink and have to turn on the water.
Do you:
Have a sink with one knob that acts as hot and cold (go to 5)
Have a sink with two knobs, one for hot, one for cold (go to 6)

2
After you have finished using the toilet, you flush and make your next move.
Do you:
Wash your hands (go to 1)
Leave without washing (go to 10)

3
You hold your razor up to your ZZ Top beard, however, the bluesy power within the beard causes the razorblade to begin to quiver before shattering all over your hands. Tiny cuts cover your hands, forcing you to wash your hands. (Go to 1)

4
You brush your teeth and spit out the toothpaste. Somehow, you manage to spit toothpaste all over your hands. Your only option is to wash your hands. (Go to 1)

5
You turn on the water and adjust the knob to bring the water to your desired temperature.
Do you:
Adjust the knob all the way to hot (go to 7)
Adjust the knob all the way to cold (go to 8)
Adjust the knob to a midpoint in the temperature range (go to 7)

6
Turning on the water, do you:
Turn on just the hot water (go to 7)
Turn on just the cold water (go to 8)
Turn on both knobs and adjust to a midpoint range (go to 7)

7
The water from the sink is now flowing. You test the water but it is still too cold.
Do you:
Wait for the water temperature to change (go to 9)
Tough it out and start washing your hands (go to 8)

8
You lather and rinse your hands and shut off the water. You look down and realize that your hands are still dripping wet.
Do you:
Shake them off in the sink (go to 11)
Immediately dry them with a hand towel (go to 12)
Dry them off on your pants (go to 13)

9
You wait and occasionally check the temperature with your finger. Eventually the water feels right. (Go to 8)

10
You walk out of the bathroom without having washed your hands and your disgusting behavior has caused the walls to emit a horrid stench. Written on the wall of the hallways is a message that says, "WASH YOUR HANDS".
Do you:
Get panicked and return back to the bathroom (go to 1)
Pay no mind to the message on the wall (go to 15)

11
You begin shaking them off in the sink. As you shake, a single drop lands just below your eye and begins rolling down your face.
Do you:
Finish drying them with a hand towel (go to 12)
Finish drying them on your pants (go to 13)
Call it good enough and leave the bathroom (go to 14)

12
You finish drying your hands and stop to look at them. Perfect... absolutely spotless. Feeling accomplished you leave the bathroom. (Go to 14)

13
You wipe you hands on your pants, leaving wet hand prints all over your butt. You might be embarrassed to go out like this in public but you're in your home. Who cares? (Go to 14)

14
As you leave the bathroom, you are strangely overcome with a need to check your email. Through a series of clicks you can't quite remember, you find yourself looking at pictures of cats. Your day is over.
The end

15
Walking through the hallway, the stench begins to get worse. You notice that the walls are growing in size. Looking down, you realize that the stench is of you melting in your own filth. You try to make it back to the bathroom, but you can not reach it in time. You are stinking pile of filth.
The end

Suggestions

Outside of occasional design issues, faucets are pretty good at what they do. There are still a few areas for improvement.

I agree with the Ace Hardware guys that an instant hot water option would be a nice thing to have. Especially in the winter and in apartments in which the landlord might not have properly insulated the hot water pipes.

The design of the faucets are kind of boring. There is energy in the running water that could be harnessed and turned into something that would create play value in washing your hands or enhance aesthetic value of the sink. Also, since the basics of the design have changed very little, it is ripe for innovation. Why should the water always falls down from a spigot? Why couldn't it jet upwards like a fountain or sideways or be arched? How come we can't control the spray from the spigot like we can with modern shower heads?

In order to get into a playful mood I watched a couple of episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. After feeling that I had adequately yucked it up, I began work on my mind map.

Mind Map!

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First of all, I find it very interesting how often my mind eventually lands on poop. During the mind map, my mind may have wandered a bit too far away from the sinks/basin theme as I was coming up with things such as hair metal and the Mario dance. In case you don't know what the Mario dance is, hopefully this video remind you:

Using the mind map, I did find some ideas that I thought were interesting such as an adjustable height sink (I once lived in an apartment where the sink was about 6 inches too low, which is surprisingly annoying) and hidden drying racks to free up counter space.

In order to generate more ideas, I created an association map.

View full size image

It was here that I was able to come up with some of my favorite silly ideas. I also found that cross products was helpful in coming up with silly ideas.

Here are my 10 favorite ideas:

1) Screaming food disposal - a must have for horror film fans!
2) DJ Drier - dish cloth that squeaks like a scratching record when drying a dish
3) Pinwheel sprayer - combination of the rinsing sprayer and a pin wheel that spins around when water is flowing
4) Dish Washing MP3 Player - Sensor embedded in the sink that can tell when it is filled water and will play music.
5) Whirlpool drain cover - when draining the liquid this forces the water to circulate around and create a whirlpool
6) Green Slimy Dish Soap - Dish soap that is real gross and gooey when coming out of the bottle
7) Flexible rubber sink - Not very silly but it would be used to prevent dishes from breaking if you drop them.
8) Sneezing sprayer - Sprayer is shaped like a face with the water coming out the nose. Each time you press the lever, it makes a sneezing noise.
9) Robot dish partner - after washing a dish you can hand it to this robotic arm that will rinse and place it on the drying rack for you.
10) Octopus squeeze sprayer - sprayer is an octopus that you can squeeze. The water comes out of the tentacles and they flail around while you are spraying.

The focus of my ideation seemed to revolve around using interesting ingredients that I had access to and also various ways that I could cook the cookies. However, my path ultimately went towards direction that many ideas go, poop jokes.

In order to try out these recipes I created a very basic "base" cookie dough. That way I could make multiple different types of cookies without having to create a new batch each time.

¡Test 1!
My first test of cookies were a combination of chocolate covered pretzels and pistachios. The results weren't bad but they weren't very spectacular. None of the individual flavors were very discernible and I felt it was mediocre.

¡Test 2!
For the second test I used honeydew as the main ingredient. I tried one using larger chunks of honeydew and in a different cookie I used smaller chunks along with maple syrup mixed in. The larger chunk honeydew turned mushy and not very appealing. However, the smaller chunks turned into more of a dried fruit texture and the maple syrup base in the cookie was very tasty. In neither cookie was there a noticeable honeydew flavor.

¡Test 3!
This is the test that I excelled in. I went down the juvenile humor route and had a hard time coming back from it. Using the cookie base I shaped the cookies into whitey tighty underwear and used lemon zest on one cookie and put a piece of a chocolate bar into the back of another. Pulling them out of the oven, the result was a mass of cookies that looked nothing like underwear.

I quickly tried to cut the correct design into one of the cookies. I found that the dough was still too soft and was hard to work with. For the second cookie, I let it cool on the pan for a couple of minutes. I found that this cookie was much easier to cut the design into.

Lemon Zesty Whitey Tighty

There was no lemon flavor at all and the cookie with a chocolate in the rear tasted like a chocolate chip cookie.

I was very pleased with how these cookies turned out but I still wanted to experiment with cooking methods. So, I moved on to

¡Test 4!
The cooking test tried two different methods: pan fried and boiled. I'll start off by saying that boiling the cookies was a horrible failure. Boiling a ball of cookie dough for about five minutes resulted in a dog vomit cookie.

Dog Vomit Cookie

The pan fried cookies turned into small pancakes. They were good but pan frying it made it seem less of cookie.

¡FINAL TEST!
By this point I was feeling a little sick and was coming to the realization that I wasn't going to top poopy underwear cookies, so I decided to go for it. I felt that the whitey tightys with a chocolate chunk was lacking something. I remade the cookie using crushed chocolate pretzels and also tried to hide the chocolate inside the cookie. However, after cutting out the shape of the cookie, I realized it wasn't going to be very likely that I could prevent the melted chocolate from showing along the edges.

I feel pretty good about these cookies. I think I'll call them Whitey Tighty Surprisey.

Laundry day

RECIPE:
2 sticks of butter
1.5 cups of white sugar
splash of vanilla extract
1 tsp of baking soda
2.3 cups of all purpose flour
~1 cup of crushed chocolate pretzels

DIRECTIONS:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2) Mix together everything beside the pretzels.
3) With about a tablespoon size of dough, create a cup shape and place the pretzels into the cup. Cover the pretzels with cookie dough to keep them "hidden".
4) Bake for 8-10 minutes.
5) Let cookies cool on pan for about 2 minutes before cutting them into underwear!