PROJECT BACKGROUND :
This project, a part of the 'Imperial Innovation Challenge', was a week long sprint aimed towards bringing together design, business, science and technology to design prototypes and accelerate the development strategies for early stage technologies. Few RCA Service Design students were selected to work with Imperial College's MBA students, where we picked an existing early stage tech start-up and spent the week working on discovering new applications for it's core technology, create multiple propositions + understand stakeholders, create speculative prototypes, explore intellectual property, develop experimentation plans to de-risk investment, and develop business models and investment strategies for it. Our start-up, 'Vox Aeris', aims to purify indoor air through a new technology of 'acoustic agglomeration'. We strategised a more commercially viable and effective application for the technology, which won us the 2nd prize during the final pitch in front of the 'investors'.
AWARDS :
2nd Prize Winners
1 Week - October 2023
TEAM :
RCA - Parul Gupta; Imperial College - Devansh Agrawal, Rahul Goel, Ranghao Bao, Reyhan Hidayat
ROLE :
Application ideation, stakeholder analysis, design concept and visuals, presentation graphics, business model ideation
LEARNINGS :
Understanding 'deep tech, learning how to analyse a technology and its market viability to imagine and expand its potential, understanding how people’s needs and business requirements go together, creating speculative prototypes, exploring intellectual property, identifying and developing experimentation plans to de-risk investment for new products, and developing business models and investment strategies for it. Further, the experience of working in a fast-paced strategy sprint with MBA students was an enriching experience and taught me how to work collaboratively and efficiently in vastly multi-disciplinary teams.
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ABOUT VOX AERIS
Vox Aeris, founded by Selene Sari, is a a startup working on an innovative and sustainable way to purify indoor air. The focus of Vox Aeris currently is offering solutions that prioritize health without sacrificing efficiency or increasing maintenance costs. The aim of the start-up is to look at the unrealised repercussions of polluted indoor air and attempt to fill the gap in adequately catering to it.
CURRENT APPLICATION & NEW OPPORTUNITY
The current application developed by Selene for this new, efficient air-purifying technology was creating a 'speaker' which will play music while purifying the indoor air. We analysed the potential for this application and realised that more commercial applications with the potential to clean more air at once might be more useful.
DECISION PROCESS
Out of the several potential applications we theorised, we evaluated them on their 'impact potential' and 'implementation potential', where we realised that using this technology to make the air-filtration systems inside Heating, Ventilation & Air-Conditioning system (HVAC) might be the best commercially viable solution with most potential for impact
SOLUTION STRATEGY
Our solution strategy, to use the air-filtration technology for HVAC systems, is explained as follows -
THE TECHNOLOGY
'Acoustic Agglomeration' is an extremely efficient technology which can be utilised in air-filtration by utilising much cheaper materials and less energy than current filters used in HVAC systems. Here, we have visualised how might this technology be utilised for this specific application.
ABOUT THE PRODUCT
In this section, we discuss the features of this new application, its benefits, and the value it might generate for the various stakeholders involved.
DESIGN PROCESS
MARKET OPPORTUNITY
BUSINESS MODEL IDEATION
MARKET VIABILITY EVALUATION
Understanding technological feasibility, stakeholder desirability and economic viability for the product, and designing de-risking experiments to improve investment viability.
EXPERIMENT DESIGN PROCESS
PRODUCT IMPLEMENTATION PLANNING
