Molekule // Mini Air Purifier

 Project/

Molekule has totally disrupted air purification market.  Their patented PECO purification technology doesn’t just trap pollutants, it destroys them.  And the elegant design of their Molekule Air purifier made that revolutionary functionality something you’d actually want in your house. It’s a devastating one two punch.

Chris first met the Molekule team when he was a user experience mentor at Highway 1, the hardware incubator where they started out.  So when Molekule decided to develop a new, smaller purifier, they reached out for help understanding customer expectations.   What is a smaller purifier for?  What did customers expect it to do?  How it would fit into their lives and homes?  Understanding those expectations could then help to define targets for the design and engineering teams.  But asking people about things they haven’t experienced yet is tricky.  So we devised some experience prototypes to help spur conversations. 

To understand how a smaller purifier would fit into people’s homes and lives, the industrial design team came up with five form archetypes, and created foam models for us to bring to the interviews.  These were not design proposals.  They were meant to stake out a range of possibilities for users to respond to.  We were not picking an answer, just provoking conversation.

To understand whether we would meet performance expectations with a smaller device, the engineering team developed two functional prototypes.  One used the largest filters they thought that they might use, and the other the smallest.  We left these with users to try, and conducted follow up interviews to see how they did.

Armed with these conversation starters, we conducted eight, two hour interviews with folks who were interested in a smaller version of the Molekule Air.  Much of that time was spent going from room to room with our form archetypes, talking about specific needs and challenges.  A couple days later, we came back for 30 minute follow ups, to talk about their experience with the functional prototypes.

Result/

The Molekule Mini Air is as gorgeous and effective as its big brother.  One again, superior functionality and brilliant industrial design are the keys to its success.  But Molekule’s foresight to investigate user experience before they completed design and engineering helped to set the stage for that success.