NID Ahmedabad
Helios
A redesign of the immersion water-heating rod that tells you when the water's ready and refuses to heat when it's dry.
In much of India the immersion rod is how a bucket of bathwater gets hot: a bare heating coil you clip onto the rim, plug in, and wait on. It’s cheap and it works, but it gives no feedback on whether it’s on or how hot the water is, it’s often left plugged in while dry, the metal jacket cracks and scales over time, and a cracked rod in a bucket of water is a real electrocution risk. Helios is an 8-week, technically complex redesign of that rod, to address the problems and threats it poses.
Research covered survey, study and observation. Users ranged from students (who wanted fast heating, automation and good looks) to nuclear families in rented homes (quick, repeated use), and the technical issues were consistent: time to heat, no temperature indicator, no feedback on status or power, and leakage. Watching it used in real bathrooms filled in the rest. The panels below go from those observations to the resolved device.
Designed at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. See the full project on Behance →