Design Concepts For The Future.

The coronavirus has us all rethinking our cleaning habits. As we watched the story of coronavirus unfold, we kept seeing different alerts about the importance of cleanliness. Among the notifications we saw on the news were those about the extreme importance of washing hands. As the situation changed, people began to offer different suggested amounts of time for hand washing. First 30 seconds then 60, then a minute twenty until finally two minutes. I’m sure this will have changed by the time we post this article. With all the attention concerning the amount of time a person should wash their hands, we began to think of how we could seamlessly integrate 2 minutes of hand washing into peoples day. 

The team began to think of contemporary concepts for something we each have in our households, soap dispensers and toothbrush holders. Generally cheap pieces of plastic we disregard, the design team looked at these items and the time we spent in our bathrooms as a pivotal way to battle Covid-19. After a bit of thinking we began to conceptualize ways to innovate these products. Aside from offering a fresh new look to the typical bathroom sink soap dispenser/ toothbrush rack, we wanted to find a way to incorporate tech that could boost the utility of these products.

We decided to mold our dispenser and toothbrush holder with PMMA to give them a fresh matte coat and give the bathroom products a modern silhouette to match their smooth matte look.

Adding an LED time counter was a great way to enhance the use of these products. Incorporating the LED would surely be an effective way to help people monitor the amount of time that they wash their hands. A timer for the tooth brush holder seemed fitting as an extra way to help people optimize an often overlooked daily practice. 

The soap dispenser is programmed to begin counting down after a blast of soap dispenses; while the toothbrush holder begins its 2 minute countdown once a user taps the rim of the holder with the back of the toothbrush.

The designer also incorporated a wireless charging platform for the devices. To avoid a messy tangle of wires the platform can be charged with a usb cable and then removed from the platform when in use. The platform serves as a stylish means of supporting the LED function of the pieces.