Wine bottle opener opportunity
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==Establishing Potential Problems== | ==Establishing Potential Problems== | ||
- | + | After understanding the underlying need, we discussed the potential problems a consumer could encounter. We drew from personal experience and our market research to identify such problems | |
- | *The consumer's struggle of pulling the cork out of the bottle after screwing in the corkscrew | + | #The wine bottle could have been sealed with a dry or broken cork |
- | *Not having enough "limbs" to operate wine bottle opener without using a surface to place the bottle | + | #*While at the Elbow Room as a part of our anthropological observations, the owner said that they go through a high number of wine bottles each day and noticed that a good number of them had bad and/or dry wine corks that fracture the cork when the corkscrew is screwed in. |
- | *Ensuring the corkscrew's central axis is aligned to the cork's center | + | #The consumer's struggle of pulling the cork out of the bottle after screwing in the corkscrew |
- | *Easy to store and/or carry around | + | #*Because of the seal that is created between the wine bottle and outside atmosphere, pulling out a cork could cause spillage and loss of wine |
- | *Drip that comes down the inside of the wine bottle while pouring wine | + | #Not having enough "limbs" to operate wine bottle opener without using a surface to place the bottle |
- | + | #*Our wine openers and some others out there on the market require two hands to operate and one hand to hold the bottle of wine. This would be a problem if the consumer were opening a bottle of wine while trying to hold it in the air. | |
+ | #Ensuring the corkscrew's central axis is aligned to the cork's center | ||
+ | #*There is no sort of guidance to screw in the corkscrew at the center of the cork with the wine key, unlike other products out there. This could cause the cork to fracture and make it harder to pull out the cork from the wine bottle. | ||
+ | #Easy to store and/or carry around | ||
+ | #*Some products are not feasible to carry around, especially in a restaurant or bar where waiters are going from table to table. Storage takes into consideration a waiters apron for bars and restaurants and the ability to put the opener in a drawer for home consumers. | ||
+ | #Drip that comes down the inside of the wine bottle while pouring wine | ||
+ | #Avoid spilling and pouring wine on customer at a bar or restaurant | ||
+ | #*This stems from problems 2 because it would ruin a customers experience at that restaurant or bar. | ||
==Market Identification & Stakeholder Needs== | ==Market Identification & Stakeholder Needs== |
Revision as of 15:57, 24 February 2014
Contents
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Executive summary
Market Review
Anthropological Observations and Interview at wine bars
To see how wine bottles are opener in a professional environment we went to a wine bar on Walnut Street in Shadyside. We stayed there to watch the waiter work, observe how she opens bottles and then we asked her and the tenant some questions. They gave us some interesting information.
They told us that they used two types of openers. The first type is a wing corkscrew. They said that they don’t use it that much compared to the sommelier knife (wine key/waiter's friend). According to the tenant the wine key is really easy to use and light weight. It’s easy for the waiter to carry with her which is an important feature because most of the bottles are opened at the customer's table. However, use of the wine key requires some practice to be able to use it efficiently (the waitress told us that when she started to work she practiced the procedure at home). Sometimes the lever doesn't stand correctly on the bottle lip, especially if it is round, which is really inconvenient and could lead to the waiter spilling wine on the customer. The last problem that the waitress had with this type of opener is that the hinge that hold the lever get a bit loose from frequent use, which leads to a bad alignment of the screw and the cork.
The waitress' primary complaint was that she needs three hands in order to open a wine bottle quickly and correctly. One hand to hold the bottle, one to rest the lever on the bottleneck and one to give the motion to the corkscrew.
From our observations we saw that when the waitress cut the foil, she didn't cut it from the side of the bottle but from the top. She would place the blade on the top of the bottleneck and then cut the upper part with a circular motion. See next picture :
The waitress also told us that the knife from the wine key gets blunt pretty fast.
30 percent of the bottles at the wine bar used screw-on caps instead of corks. When they open a bottle for just a glass of wine, they re-seal it with a cork and usually a bottle does not stay open foe more than a day.
The last subject that approach was electrical corkscrew. The waitress told us that her mother has one because it does not require any force to open a bottle, which is what elderly people are looking for. However she said that this type of corkscrew seemed really complicated and that it takes way too long to pull the cork out.
We carried on our market study by going to a couple of other restaurants. We asked them the following questions:
- What type of corkscrew do you use?
- Why?
- Have you ever encountered any trouble with the type of corkscrew?
- Do you see any way of improving the corkscrew you use?
- Have you ever tried this type of corkscrew? (picture of our product)
Here are the answers we obtained:
- simple one (foldable screw + handle), “the 2 handles one is definitely the worst”
- 2 inches we can use to open the bottle so we don’t have to screw in a little bit, lift it up and then screw all the way down to finally being able to take the cork out. On top of that it’s very easy to carry around
- The back knife is not sharp enough and sometimes it’s tough to open bottles closed with “dry cork”
- Sharper knife
- “NO! It looks complicated”
And:
- Simple one (foldable screw + handle)
- Cheapest one and easy to carry around
- No trouble on plastic cork but it can be more difficult with dry cork (break the cork)
- No real improvement
- “Yes, my parents have one of those. I hate it because I broke it (laugh). Probably because the lever arm was made out of plastic”
We can conclude that the wine key is the most used bottle opener in this market (Bars and Restaurants). The main reason for this is it is very reliable and easy to carry around. On top of that, its price is very low compared to other bottle opener. Therefore, if we want to focus on this market, we should definitely thing about those criteria while designing our product.
Survey
In order to gain more insight into the types of wine openers consumers currently use, we designed and distributed an online survey on www.freeonlinesurvey.com. The link for our survey (now closed) is:
http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s.asp?sid=94ftwck6l19ukem416844
We asked consumers to share how many bottles they open, which type of opener they currently use, how long they usually take to open a bottle, and some of the problems that irk them. In order to gauge what kind of product they desire, we asked them to identify some of the features they look for in an ideal opener, how much money they are willing to spend on a new product, and what they think is the type of opener that is easiest to operate. The survey mainly focused on 5 different types of openers: The basic twist and pull corkscrew, the winged corkscrew, the sommelier knife or waiter’s friend, the twin prong cork puller, and the lever arm corkscrew. We received a total of 61 responses, of which only 3 consumers identified themselves as servers/bartenders who are required to open wine bottles as part of their job description. Since the survey is aimed at individual users or low volume users, we can say that 95% of the responses are fair while 5% of the responses represent high volume users, who may have more experience opening wine bottles, and therefore encounter fewer problems.
A majority of the consumers surveyed open between 1 and 2 bottles of wine per week and 23 of the 61 consumers use a Wing Corkscrew. The Sommelier Knife (Waiter’s Friend) and Basic Corkscrew are next in terms of their popularity while only 1 consumer indicated that they own a Twin Prong Cork Puller. Only about 16% of the people surveyed indicated that they take longer than 30 seconds to open a bottle of wine. The most common problem people encounter is having the cork break when opening a bottle. Some users complained that they have to be extremely careful while opening bottles so as not to spill wine everywhere, or damage/break the cork. This in turn increases the amount of time they take to open wine bottles and generally makes for a more frustrating experience. Another area of difficulty consumers identified was opening the foil off the top of the cork, which they say takes very long to accomplish. Therefore it wasn’t surprising when the most desired feature in an opener was found to be its ease of use. 55 of the 61 people surveyed chose ease of use as one of the features they look for in a wine opener. The next popular response was that the opener must be durable and not break easily.
Figure 3 shows us that most consumers are willing to pay between $5 and $20 for a new opener. This seems appropriate to us since consumers would like an opener to be durable, and you probably can’t buy a good opener for less than $5. Finally, when consumers were asked how easy they thought some openers were to operate, 40% of them chose the Lever Arm Corkscrew as the easiest while 36% chose the Twin Prong Cork Puller to be the hardest to operate. The results shown in figure 5, which depicts a stacked bar graph that relates the type of opener owned to how long it takes to open a bottle, are particularly interesting to us. They tell us that using a sommelier knife can be a hit-or-miss situation. Most of the consumers who took less than 10 seconds to open a bottle own a sommelier knife.
The survey we conducted tells us that consumers do not want an opener that breaks easily and they are willing to pay a little extra in order to get the right product. While only a few consumers actually use lever arm corkscrews, most of them perceive it to be the easiest to operate from the given options.
Expert Interviews
Competitor Products
- Cork screw with pulley reduction
- Hand-held electrically powered corkscrew
- Corkscrew for one handed operation
User reviews on internet
The main problems that the users encounter with the lever arm corkscrew is that after several use the screw don’t work properly. Most of the time it turns on the way back up which doesn’t pull the cork out of the bottle, the corkscrew become useless. What also appear in the reviews is that this kind of corkscrew is heavy and not easy to operate.
'Heavy, awkward to handle and broke after twenty uses.'
What also came out of the reviews is that the motion is not really smooth. This type of corkscrew is mainly designed for the high-end market and that is why bad tolerences are not acceptable for this type of bottle opener.
'In my opinion, this is a very poorly made opener. The manufacturing/assembly tolerances are very sloppy and the action of the opener is not smooth.'
On the other hand some reviews are quite positive about the corkscrew saying that it is easy to use and require less force than a usual corkscrew. This may be an important criteria for eldrely people or disabled. However its complexity may prevent this type of customers to use it.
About the wine key, the comments were that it is light, easy to use and quick. However one of the main problem that the user encounter is that after some time the hinge get loose and the alignment of the screw is not perfect anymore. That makes it tougher to open the bottle and stresses more the corks, which can even leads to break it. But all in all the review were really positive
Concerning the prong cork the reviews say it is difficult to use but once you got used to it, it is easy. On top of that some review were saying that it may be really useful to open broken corks or old bottles,. However many reviews point out that because of the prongs thickness it is very likely to push the cork in the bottle.
'It may be a little difficult for new beginner to use. After a while, you will enjoy the fun. It is especially good for open the older bottles'
'...the prongs are so thick that it has pushed in many a cork. Aaargh. Don't buy this. Not worth the aggravation.'
Brainstorming
Methods & Thought Process
In order to brainstorm various ideas, we needed to understand our wine opener's functionality. By doing so, we can identify problems in various consumer audiences and generate ideas that address those problems. Using various techniques such as market iteration and random word generation, we brainstormed over 100 diverse ideas that focused on solving problems identified previously.
- Identify wine opener functionality and underlying needs.
- Establish markets base on opportunities for product improvement and stakeholder needs.
- Generate ideas by iterating through markets and randomization processes.
- Evaluate ideas and select top 5 ideas that withing the class' scope.
Product Objectives
Ability to open a bottle of wine
Underlying Need: Pouring wine into a glass and drinking it
Underlying Need: Easier to open a bottle of wine with a corkscrew.
Underlying Need: "Delivering" wine to customer(s) at a restaurant or bar
Allows for bottle to be resealed with cork
Underlying Need: Consumer can replace cork and store wine
Establishing Potential Problems
After understanding the underlying need, we discussed the potential problems a consumer could encounter. We drew from personal experience and our market research to identify such problems
- The wine bottle could have been sealed with a dry or broken cork
- While at the Elbow Room as a part of our anthropological observations, the owner said that they go through a high number of wine bottles each day and noticed that a good number of them had bad and/or dry wine corks that fracture the cork when the corkscrew is screwed in.
- The consumer's struggle of pulling the cork out of the bottle after screwing in the corkscrew
- Because of the seal that is created between the wine bottle and outside atmosphere, pulling out a cork could cause spillage and loss of wine
- Not having enough "limbs" to operate wine bottle opener without using a surface to place the bottle
- Our wine openers and some others out there on the market require two hands to operate and one hand to hold the bottle of wine. This would be a problem if the consumer were opening a bottle of wine while trying to hold it in the air.
- Ensuring the corkscrew's central axis is aligned to the cork's center
- There is no sort of guidance to screw in the corkscrew at the center of the cork with the wine key, unlike other products out there. This could cause the cork to fracture and make it harder to pull out the cork from the wine bottle.
- Easy to store and/or carry around
- Some products are not feasible to carry around, especially in a restaurant or bar where waiters are going from table to table. Storage takes into consideration a waiters apron for bars and restaurants and the ability to put the opener in a drawer for home consumers.
- Drip that comes down the inside of the wine bottle while pouring wine
- Avoid spilling and pouring wine on customer at a bar or restaurant
- This stems from problems 2 because it would ruin a customers experience at that restaurant or bar.
Market Identification & Stakeholder Needs
Restaurants/bars
Wineries
High Volume users
Low Volume users
Elderly people
Ideas that are not the wine opener
Idea Generation
Top 3 Designs
- Grappling Hook
- Handheld Lever Arm
- Clamp and Twist
Design Concepts
Grappling Mechanism
What came out of the anthropological observation and the interviews at the wine bars is that the wine key has several problems. The important points are the following :
- The hinge get loose and the corkscrew doesn't work properly anymore
- The lever is not steady on the bottle lip and may slip
- The quicker it is to open the bottle the better
From these two observations we came up with the idea to redesign the wine key. The part that takes most of the time during the opening process is to screw the cork in. That's why we came up with the idea to design a wine bottle openener that doesn't use a srcew. We came up with a technique which main principle is to insert a thin piece of metal between the cork and the bottleneck. The thin bar has a hinge with a spring-loaded foldable part at the end. Once the bar is deep enough the small part fold at 90 degrees. When the user pull the bar back up using a simple handle. The spring-loaded part take the cork with on the way up.
With this technique the cork is not damaged. This also means that it is really unlikely to break the cork while opening the bottle. Moreover this technique is quick because it doesn't require a spinning motion. Which could be very useful for the bar and restaurant market.
This technique as three main problems :
- It may be tough to insert the whole mechanism between the cork and the bottle neck.
- As the mechanism as to be thin, the hinge that links the spring-loaded part must be small. On the other hand ith as to be resistant because it will undergo an important force.
- The force to apply is quite important because there is no lever arm that reduce the rquired force to take the cork out.
Spring Loaded Arrow Corkscrew
We thought about another way of opening a bottle without using a screw. This design involves kind of an arrow that has foldable parts which could be spring loaded. The shape has been designed to penetrate the cork easily without punching a huge hole. Once it has been all the way through the cork, the spring will make 2 metal pieces pop out so that the item won't be able to fit in the hole anymore. The user can now pull the cork out vertically. Finally, the user just has to unscrew the head of the device in order to detach the cork from the bottle opener.
This item is very adapted to the market "Bars and Restaurant" because it matches the needs of the waiters. It is light, small and easy to carry around. On top of that, by adding detachable parts (the arrow and the handle), it's easy to replace or change those components. We could design handles that match a man's hand or woman's hand. We could also think about adding a beer opener on the top. It is important to precise that the head of the arrow should be protected in order to avoid the user to get injured while carrying it around. That's why we were thinking about designing a cover for this item.
Handheld Lever Arm Corkscrew
Gripping Bottleneck Lever Arm
Clamp and Twist Corkscrew
Pugh Chart
A pugh chart is a chart that is used to compare different options. In engineering conception, we use it in order to compare and choose different design possibilities. We first have to choose a "standard" product (used as a reference) depending on our design orientation. Then we set criteria that are important for our final product and assign weights to every criteria to judge their importance according to the market we are seeking. Then we compare every aspects of our design to the reference with the following notation:
++: if our product is way better than the reference on this criteria
+: if our product is slightly better than the reference on this criteria
0: if our product is equivalent to the reference on this criteria
-: if our product is slightly worse than the reference on this criteria
--: if our product is way worse than the reference on this criteria
Then we count the score for each design we were envisaging and calculate the final score by doing the difference between "+" and "-".
For this pugh chart we decided to compare our design ideas to the standard wine key used in bars and restaurants because it is the market we are interesting in. Since we are seeking for this market, we want our item to match the waiters and restaurants' costumers expectations. The most important aspect of our final product according to this market are:
-size
-durability
-transportability
-reliability
-efficiency
We can see that some of our design ideas have negative scores and some others have positive scores. This pugh chart definitely helps us to know on what to focus the scope of our future design ambition. From now on, we are going to continue with only the spring loaded arrow, the twist+bottle holder and the extendable lever arm. Even if the design 1 has a negative score, we still thing that the idea is good and that we can take something out of it. We will then decide which of this 3 ideas is the best to keep to accomplish our design experience.
Gantt Chart
Below is the Gantt chart that specifies the continuation of our project. It has three main periods which correspond to the realization of the three prototypes. Each main period is subdivied in smaller part such as design, ordering part and analysis. The chart also includes the three review that are due with each prototype. School break is included in the chart because the group won't work on the project during this time. The chart will help us to stay on time with the deadlines and to plan our work efficently.
Appendix: 100 Ideas
100 "Wild" Ideas by Market | |||||||
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Ideas that are not a Wine bottle opener | Restaurants/Bars | Wineries | High Volume Users | Low Volume Users | Elderly ("Health" Problems) | ||
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Team member roles
- Alex Clement : Brain Storming
- César Daguet : Pugh Chart
- Gautam Poddar : Sketches
- Ross Farquharson : Stakeholders, Scenarios
- Claude Muller : Market study