Niagara Bottle Design
User Research
Worked on creating a design for a new disposable water bottle and conducted user research using existing prototypes for the Harvey Mudd Engineering Clinic project with Niagara Bottling Company.
Abstract
The Niagara Bottle Design Clinic Team’s year-long project goal was to improve Niagara’s half-liter water bottle design by increasing loading capabilities and/or reducing the amount of resin used. The first semester of work consisted of two major project focuses: (1) a customer study to determine customer bottle purchase behaviors and (2) an FEA-driven comparative analysis of bottle performance. The second semester built on the first semester's work by focusing on (1) improving the simulations of the first bottle design, (2) creating and simulating a second bottle design, and (3) conducting an online survey to receive feedback on the new bottle designs. The project culminated in a comprehensive analysis of (1) the team’s consumer research over both semesters and (2) the team’s simulation results of the three full bottle designs. The consumer research allowed the team to make evidence-supported predictions about how consumers are likely to spend their money on water bottles and how they would respond to each of the team’s designs. The simulation results allowed the team to better understand the relative performance of its designs compared to Niagara’s Eco 4 bottle, and to recommend further steps necessary to fully validate the performance of each design.
Problem Statement
The 2019-2020 Niagara Bottle Design Clinic team will create and evaluate a new design for a half-liter plastic water bottle. The design should (1) consider the loads that will be placed on the bottle during consumer use and shipping/storage process, (2) align with Niagara's bottle manufacturing techniques, and (3) incorporate user feedback to improve and validate the team’s bottle design.
Consumer Studies Overview
Consumers are important to Niagara. Although Niagara strongly considers the effects of top loads that occur during stacking and transportation, it also considers feel stiffness – which estimates how stiff a full water bottle feels to human touch – since customers often grip water bottles by applying horizontal loads during water bottle use. Since customers may factor in a bottle’s feel stiffness quality when weighing whether to purchase one bottle over another, new bottle designs can be optimized to modify the feel stiffness in a customer favorable direction.
To better understand customer purchasing behavior, this project investigated the multivariate relationship between (1) customer buying patterns, (2) isolated bottle features, and (3) overall bottle design for its low-cost half-liter water bottle. While the average customer is unlikely to change their buying patterns in response to incremental bottle design changes, it has not yet been understood how customers (a) rationalize their water bottle purchasing decisions and (b) decide which water bottle features or qualities they are likely to justify their purchase or non-purchase on (i.e. sound, shape, grip surface area, contour angles, etc.). As Niagara moves towards newer, more innovative designs that deliver bottle improvements, a systematic process for determining customer purchase behaviors will become more important for improving its bottles. The team sought to understand how customer preferences can be used to improve Niagara’s half-liter water bottle design.
During the first semester, the team conducted an interactive customer survey to identify customers’ initial impressions and qualitative evaluation of a standard Niagara water bottle during a normal customer use scenario. The team then conducted a comprehensive interactive consumer study to determine the driving factors behind bottle purchase decisions, and to better understand the role bottle design plays in these decisions.
During the second semester, the team conducted an online customer survey to assess relative customer affinity of the aesthetic appearance of four bottles – the standard Niagara bottle and the team’s three bottle designs.
Consumer Studies Process
Consumer Survey #1
Consumer Interviews
Consumer Survey #2
Consumer Survey #1
Figure 1: Graph of bottle favorability of each of the five different categories
This survey was conducted with fourteen participants. For the questions related to rating bottle features and the overall impression of the bottle on a scale from 1 (Very Satisfied) to 7 (Very Unsatisfied), Figure 1 is a graph made of the average rating of the respondents.
As shown in Figure 1, the average favorability of the respondents decreased as the bottle became increasingly empty. The sound category showed consistent decrease while the other four categories had the lowest favorability scores when the bottle was partially full rather than empty. Since the scale was from 1 (Very Satisfied) to 7 (Very Unsatisfied), favorability was chosen instead of the scale to better represent the reaction of the respondents.
Consumer Interviews
An interview participant examining a prototype bottle
The interviews were designed after performing and analyzing the data from the customer survey, in order to completely understand the relationship between buying patterns, isolated bottle features, and overall bottle design. The interview questions were broken into three parts: (1) Customer Purchase Scenarios, (2) Comparative Bottle Purchase Behaviors, and (3) Ideal Bottle Features.
During the interview the participant was given a bottle and asked to provide commentary. The participant was asked if they would buy the bottle if it: (1) cost the same as all other bottles, (2) was cheaper than all other bottles, (3) was cheaper than specific bottles they had indicated they liked more.
Interview Conclusions
After conducting the interviews, the following conclusions can be made. First, that customers’ looking for low cost bottles would prefer to spend less money on a bottle that they aren’t completely satisfied with than to spend more money on a bottle that they are satisfied with, or even their ideal bottle. As long they aren’t worried about the bottles breaking or spilling, they would generally prefer to buy the cheapest bottle. Second, the only feature that almost every customer was willing to spend more money for was feel stiffness. The reason that feel stiffness was important to customers is because if a bottle was too flimsy, they were worried that it would break and spill, or that it would be too difficult to drink out of. Almost all consumers were willing to spend more money to buy a bottle that had enough feel stiffness for them to not be worried about the bottle failing. Third, many customers noted that if the label said that a bottle was made with less plastic than another, they would be more inclined to buy it. In fact, they were willing to buy a bottle that they weren’t completely satisfied with over a bottle that they are more satisfied with, even if they were the same price, if the first bottle was more eco friendly. This means that bottles that may look and feel a little different from what customers expect are okay as long as: the bottle is marketed as having less plastic, the bottle is priced as the cheapest option in store, and the customer is not worried that the bottle will fail.
Consumer Survey #2
Consumer Study #2 Results
The online survey was conducted to get data on which bottles’s aesthetic appearance is more favorable, as well as information on what prices they would pay for these bottles. The survey was delivered through an online google form.
Four bottles were used for the online survey. The first three bottles were models of the team’s prototype bottles and the fourth bottle is a current Niagara bottle design.
The survey was completed with 113 responses. The respondents were made up of about 75% Harvey Mudd students, and 25% of students from other campuses, or family and friends of the clinic team.
Consumer Study #2 Conclusions
The main findings of Survey 2 are first, that bottle 1 was the most liked bottle by a large margin, and was the bottle with the highest average price that consumers were willing to pay. We learned that people like aesthetics of bottle 1 the best because they find it cool and exciting, and would be willing to pay the most for it, so if bottle 1 was chosen for manufacturing, we can expect a positive reception from consumers. Bottles 2 and 3 got nearly identical responses for both average price, as well as favorite and least favorite bottle, so aesthetics should not be a factor if choosing between bottle 2 or 3. There were no overwhelming negative feelings toward bottles 2 or 3, so if one of these bottles was chosen for manufacturing, there shouldn’t be a dramatic response from customers at least from an aesthetic point of view. On the other hand, bottle 4 was the least liked bottle, and was the bottle with the lowest average price that consumers were willing to pay for it. This is likely because it’s a bottle that they are familiar with and have used before, so they know that the bottle is typically sold for a low price and are familiar with how the bottle feels. The point of this survey is not to show that people dislike the current Niagara bottle, because there was certainly an amount of bias in the survey against the Niagara bottle from the bottle images, not shuffling the order of the questions, and the fact that it is the only bottle that people have used before. Instead, the value of this study is to learn about the reasons why people picked a bottle as their favorite and least favorite, and verifying that the prototype designs would get a positive reception from consumers. The results of this study are promising in that it seems like people are excited about the prototype bottles because they have unusual designs, and that seems to be something that consumers value.