How to trick your brain to make food taste differently
The human brain is incredible, but it can be tricked.
American Psychological Association finds higher levels of stress in constant phone checkers
US adults who report that they constantly or often check their email, texts and social media accounts are significantly more stressed than those who don’t check them as frequently.
How we designed the doppel app
We’ve blogged before about the doppel design process, but what we haven’t talked about so far is our app.
Why do we get butterflies when we're nervous?
The swooping sensation in the gut commonly known as ‘butterflies in the stomach’ is a normal and natural bodily response. But why should thinking about an upcoming presentation, sporting event or even a date make us feel this way?
doppel selected from 3,000 projects to make Hello Tomorrow’s Top 500 deep-tech startups worldwide
We’re very excited to announce that doppel has been selected as one of Hello Tomorrow’s Top 500 deep-tech startups worldwide.
Hello Tomorrow is a global nonprofit working to accelerate science and tech entrepreneurship to build the next generation of companies that can solve humanity’s big challenges.
They select the 50 best startups in ten industries: Data & AI, Energy Transition, Environment, Food & Agriculture, Wellbeing, Healthcare, Industry 4.0, New Materials, Mobility, and Aerospace.
More than 3,000 startups applied and we’re now competing to win best in Wellbeing as well as best overall early-stage startup.
We’ll find out whether we’ve won at the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit on the 26th and 27th of October in Paris. Let us know if you’re going to be there! And wish us luck!
Optical illusions explained
Although our senses like vision, touch and taste feel truthful, they do not necessarily accurately reproduce the physical reality of the world around us.
Fifteen ‘untranslatable’ emotions you never knew you had
Just because English doesn’t have a word for these emotions, it doesn’t mean we don’t experience them.
Exploring the 'fight-or-flight' response
The ‘fight-or-flight response’ is the ultimate survival tool. It describes the instinctive physiological responses that all humans and most mammals experience when faced with a threatening situation.
Wearing a heart on your sleeve: new research shows that a tactile heartbeat significantly reduces stress
New research published in Scientific Reports shows that a heartbeat-like vibration delivered onto the inside of the wrist can make the wearer feel significantly less stressed.
Three science backed methods to help you to stop procrastinating
We’ve blogged before about how taking a break is good for your levels of concentration, but this time we want to focus on procrastination - the ultimate obstacle to just. getting. things. done!
Given that this post is all about getting to it, we’ll do just that.
Just get started!
The Zeigarnik Effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks, or in other words, once you get started on a task, it’ll get stuck in your head and that will motivate you to finish it.
Break up big tasks
Research from Penn State University found that people generally enjoy getting small tasks done as soon as possible. Amusingly, in one of the experiments to support this hypothesis, students were asked to carry one of two buckets of water to the end of an alley. Contrary to what you might expect, the preference was to pick up the bucket closer to the start position, even though that meant carrying it further!
Share your goals
If you write down your goals and share them with a supportive friend or coworker, you are more likely to achieve them. One undergraduate study showed that those who did this were 78% likely to succeed and a huge variety of professionals testify that this is indeed, a thing.
So get started, and good luck!
Three breathing techniques to beat stress
When we’re stressed, heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure all increase. And when we breathe deeply, we’re mimicking the way we feel just before we fall asleep or when we first wake up - two of the moments when our bodies are most relaxed.
How we designed our packaging
Packaging is important. Sure it’s not as important as the product itself - but as the first thing a customer sees, it’s still important to get right.
And when a product is on display in a retail space or at an event, the packaging becomes part of communicating the product. It needs to both inform and showcase, and often it becomes part of the solution for transportation or storage.
doppel is so far only available online but these were all points we considered when designing the packaging.
When designing our packaging and the ‘unboxing’ experience we first reviewed a huge variety of packaging already in use in the market. We looked at wearable products like watches, jewelry and fitness trackers, but also at lots of unrelated products such as chocolate bars and wine!
We went through the same design process we do with all aspects of doppel:
- Research is followed by the creation of a mood boards, image critique, and then the creation of a desirable and essential criteria list.
- We then begin concept creation, concept critique, concept development, before designing a final design.
- Next we create prototypes, test them, and then develop the design before beginning user testing.
- Finally we select the materials and then it’s time for mass manufacture!
Shape
When we were developing the concepts, one of the most important aspects to consider was shape.
Initially we wanted a slim box that presented doppel flat. We thought that packing that could slip through a letterbox was a great idea! However as doppel is a premium product our consumers need to sign for it - so we abandon that idea as that shape is a poor use of space when shipping. Shipping a cube is the most efficient form for us to send doppel, the financial and environmental a factors are an important consideration for large scale production and distribution.
Materials
Our visual identity is clean, simple and inspired by the natural world. The team felt that it was important to keep a clean, minimal aesthetic, but as a minimal soft textured brown box could easily just look like cardboard, it was imperative that we make the packaging look and feel interesting, unique and high quality. Plus earthy tones make the crisp black and white of doppel really pop!
Graphic design
Apart from requiring our logo and brand name the rest of the packaging was a blank canvas. In the app we have the beautiful animation, a pair of waves. This graphic is used to measure the user's heart rate and to control the rhythms. This flowing back and forth aesthetic represents the changes in mood and pace of life that doppel helps the user achieve. It was fitting that we use this design on the packaging.
We experimented by abstracting the wave formation to create a graphic that could wrap around the exterior of the box.
Prototyping
Our first set of prototypes looked visually interesting, but not refined enough, the waves were too much of a feature and distracted from the doppel logo. We experimented with different colors, then different materials, but overlaying and bonding a form like that would have been incredibly difficult. Having been inspired by embossed features on other boxes we hoped to emboss the waves, revealing the pattern through shadows, creating a glorious texture. But getting a prototype would have required an extremely expensive tool. In an attempt to achieve a similar subtle texture and color change as embossing we experimented with a stencil and spray varnish directly onto the card.
The effect was great! The varnish catches the light and provides a lovely texture change that your fingers want to explore. For mass manufacture this is achieved by curing a UV resin onto the card.
Insert
Inserts rely so heavily on material form strength that it is very difficult to prototype this effectively. Staying with card, we made many different inserts holding doppel and the other parts in various formations. Showing doppel off while keeping it protected and ensuring the user can get it out easily was a challenge.
We tested the unboxing process with many people. Watching their process was very useful and helps us add features to help them unbox easily.
Mass manufacture
Packaging has been one of the easiest parts for us from a manufacturing perspective. This is because we have kept to a very fundamental form and common techniques. There are some parts of doppel that have never been made before - our clear topped motor for example - but where possible we have stuck to existing processes and parts.
We really love our packaging and we hope you enjoy it too!
