The X-Opener is a craft beer bottle opener aimed at defining avid beer drinkers that care about preserving their craft bottle tops. With the bottle cap being drawn automatically by a magnet, the conscious disposal of the bottle cap is embedded into the user's mind.
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Cape Town is well known for its craft beer drinking society and the craft beer lifestyle is more than quenching your thirst at the end of a long day. The discovery, experience and enjoyment of new blends and creations developed by fellow local citizens, can almost be seen as a professional sport.
As a main component of the BTech Industrial Design course, I was requested to create and develop a start-up over the duration of one year with three other students. In this project we conceptualised, designed, marketed, and sold an industrially designed product.
The company MOXI was founded by us and intended to be successful by evoking emotion within consumers and sparking conversation between them. We identified an opportunity to create an alternative way of opening various craft beer bottles that not only ensures ease of opening craft beer yet also offers an elite and sophisticated product indicating you are a socialite craft beer drinker.
Client
BTech Industrial Design through Cape Peninsula University of Technology (SA)
Roles
Product & Brand Designer
Financial Strategy & Sales
Researcher
Head Contact Manufacturers
Team
Ashleigh Wedlake
Sebastian Harington
Zahur Ameeroedien
This project was facilitated by the Bachelor final year course TheR5K Project at CPUT in South Africa. ZAR is the SA currency and 5k stands for R5000, which is loosely converted to €350, at the time. This was the profit we needed to make by the end of the year with selling a product designer by us.
The prolonged teamwork for about 9 months, where we simulated a company structure, was an entirely new experience for me. This was the first time where I worked on a long-term project, with my own money invested and faced challenges such as time, people, and money affairs. The design brief required the presentation of a working prototype, a detailed design research report and a meticulous proof of profit via a cash flow statement.
At the start of the project, I had no idea what product we would design, develop and sell, however I did think we would make a lot more profit than the project requirement. The fascinating thing of success is overcoming obstacles by acting in ways one couldn’t anticipate, by thinking on your feet. As we ran out of time and money, after our manufacturer let us know that he couldn’t produce another batch of 50 units and no other factory was able to do this in South Africa, I saw the opportunity to sell our last 10 X-Openers for double our initial price to customers in The Netherlands. The price was very reasonable for the Dutch market, and ensured our success.
To kick-start this project, we had to start with ourselves, who are we? We are a strong minded and bold team of designers that needed to bring a product to the market and make a profit. It was that simple. So, we founded the company MOXI, which is derived from ‘moxie’ meaning force of character and determination. And created a vision and a mission to help us focus and guide our decision making throughout the year.
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We believed that creating a strong company ethos first, would make it easier to then design a product that fits in with our way of thinking, and it did!
In order to make the brand identity complete for MOXI, I designed the logo and business card keeping a clean design and implementing the ultimate colour contrast, namely black and white.
In order to come up with a good product direction, we considered these guidelines to help with the process:
Through brainstorm sessions, reading up on local trends and literature, visiting local stores and with the help of reference boards, we found that creating a bottle opener targeted for the up-and-coming craft beer market was a promising avenue to explore.
With the bottle opener as a concept, it was important to have a good understanding who we were designing for. I created a persona for MOXI, to really make the concept come alive and have a shared understanding of the target market’s values and needs.
Daniel Swart, 31-year-old and Afrikaans heritage. He is a landscape photographer, living in the suburbs in Cape Town together with his partner and dog. A hardworking man with an exquisite eye for detail, but with little time to socialise in his spare time. When he is not traveling for shoots, he enjoys his morning coffee in a local store from where he works remotely. Daniel is a gadget lover, and recently bought himself a drone, from where a new passion grew: aerial photography.
MOXI applied a User Centred Design approach, which is an iterative procedure aimed to serve the user. This framework keeps track of the context, goals and needs of the user throughout the design process.
MOXI used the lean start-up methodology, because this method uses three key principles that make progression faster than the ‘traditional’ way of setting up a business, which involves long term planning and strategy.
The lean start-up principles:
The business model canvas served as a tool to see the economic relevance of the X-Opener
Cardboard → 3D Print → Steel
The groundwork had been laid and this was the time for conceptualisation, prototyping, user testing, searching for beer sponsors and sourcing manufacturers.
Through an iterative design process, sketches, CAD modelling,3D printing and eventually laser cutting steel sheets, we developed a series of prototypes. We tested these on ourselves (designers), on beer lovers at the Stellenbosch Craft Beer festival and events at local breweries (users), and on manufacturers in Cape Town. These tests gave insights in the desired shape, size, overall ergonomics, material choice and functional needs of the design.
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The X-Opener is designed for the passionate beer drinker who cares deeply for the quality of their craft beer. The inclusion of the magnet ensures for the opener to easily lock into place on a bottle cap and makes sure the cap isn’t dented when gracefully opening a beer. Some drinkers enjoy collecting bottle caps. The magnet promotes conscious disposal of the cap, but also evokes a sense of gamification.
Stainless steel was used for the body, instilling a sense of economic value due to its weight and promotes sturdiness and durability to the product. With a bead blasted finish, to create a rough texture, but help smoothen the edges of the laser cut steel.
The aesthetics of the X-Opener are robust, and targeted to a male dominant market, however the ergonomics are tested for female hands and usage as well as to not exclude this smaller market segment.
The leather craft with the company name engraved ensures a soft grip and promotes the physical contrast of the cold steel and warm leather, but also on a deeper level contrasting a cold beer with the warmth experienced when consuming alcohol.
This was the longest group project I had worked on which allowed me to use all that I had learned in university and take that to the market. It was a very exciting and challenging project, where designing played only one role out of many. It was challenging when our team had no clear direction and endless avenues could be explored, for example when selecting a product to sell for our business or coming up with our business identity. However, we thrived when experiencing a flow during prototyping phases or at exhibitions selling our product.
Overall, this project was a very valuable experience for me as a designer to understand which parts of the design process I excel at, namely the research phase and concept development as well as sales of the product and keeping overview of the goals, deadlines and managing the production processes at the factories.
Conceptualisation, Keyshot, sales, bookkeeping, setting up a business, bringing a product to the market, decision making, resolving disputes
Looking back at this project, I feel that running into issues along the way was a major part of my learning process. However, we did run into one major problem during our production process at the steel manufacturer. It turned out the factory did not have the right equipment to mill a 1mm deep circle into the steel body of the X-Opener for the magnet placement. We ended up with a batch of 50 units with no possibility to have more units produced in the Western Cape, and due to time constraints searching elsewhere was out of the question.
Next time, I would like to research production possibilities and limitations plus additional factory locations during the design phase. This knowledge will help the design process and allows for quick alterations when needed. In this phase a correct cost plan can be made, knowing how and where the product will be manufactured.
