Decomposing Thesis : Bee Saver

Karen Tinney, Jerry Mejia, Lauren Rossi, Samta Shah

OVERVIEW: “Bee Saver” by Tae Lim is a project focused on CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) which is the rapid death and disappearance of worker bees in a bee hive. She identifies the main source of this disappearance as the use of harmful pesticides that kill the bees directly and kill flowering plants whose nectar they rely upon. Her project aims to educate and involve the public about this problem and to inform them of the importance of bees to our ecosystem and to their consumerism.

            Her product is a informational package for an alternative pesticide, orange oil, which is not harmful to bees. The packaging contains information to educate the consumer on these issues and encourages them to be involved through an online interface. The seed-impregnated packaging houses six small bees-wax bottles of orange oil, which when mixed with water create the pesticide. The product creates a sort of system for home gardening – in which the user is encouraged to plant flowers that are helpful to bees and to care for them in ways that are not harmful to the bees.

 

RESEARCH AND RELATIONSHIPS: Her research was primarily done through one expert, her Not For Profit, Pennsylvania State University Professor Diana Cox-Foster. Her market research is limited as far as a place for this product, where it should be sold, and who would buy it. User testing was comprised of other students, as well as her not for profit – giving her skewed results that were not necessarily useful to her design process.

            She missed many areas of research that we have identified. These areas include speaking to the farmers about their choice of pesticide. If orange oil is so good why isn’t it already in use? She could have also spoken to a packaging design professional, because her project was so heavily based on the conveying information through packaging. Her lack of user testing made her project less believable. Her given scenario was not supported by real life trial of the system which her product presented.

            Because of these holes her project seems to lack an understanding of the large scale of the issue that she presents. She chose to attack the problem from the consumer level rather than the producer level, and this choice was not justified through her research/process. Because she used the Professor as her sole source of information, it appeared as though she used the research as an add-on, and not as an integrated and organic part of the process.  This research was not revisited, questioned or synthesized during her design process.

 

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT AND MATERIALS: Her project began as a study on packaging and stayed there throughout its development, rather than allowing her research discoveries to change her end result. Her process was therefore concerned mainly with the formal aspects of the object and with the graphic elements.

            It did not appear as though a lot of research was done on the materials used. She employed a variety of materials and an extensive amount of packaging. Paper impregnated with seeds, bees-wax, and orange oil were all employed in a sort of package within a package – leading us to believe there could have been an more efficient use of materials. She begins to make a system of materials that are centered around the care of plants, but breaks it with the bees-wax container, whose proposed purpose after holding the orange oil is for “personal use.” We see this as an opportunity not full explored and a waste of resource that was seemingly only added for its bee-related origins.  

 

FEASIBILITY: SOCIALLY: It is hard to imagine this project to be socially feasible because of her lack of user testing. It also asks a lot from the consumer and a certain investment of time. We wonder if there is a market for this product and if so, where? ENVIRONMENTAL: This project is not on a large enough scale to make a real impact on “saving the bees.” Though it is quite poetic in communicating her idea and educating the consumer, we think needs to appeal to a wider market to have impact. MATERIALITY: There is a waste of wax, in which she employs an item produced by the bees and then it is presumably thrown out by the user. What is the point of employing this material and then wasting it and how does that speak towards the ultimate goal of saving the bees? The product could use less material – the idea of little packages inside of a bigger package is confusing and not necessary. ECONOMICALLY: Sold for $20 – expensive for a do it yourself kit. How many people can afford this system and of those who can, how many would actually want to buy it? FUNCTIONALITY: Too much information presented, too many assumptions on consumer action, too much material to deal with.

PROJECT REVISIONS:

RESEARCH: We first did some experiments with making the orange oil to see how it reacted with water - whether it would separate or be absorbed into it. We also did some market research of other pesticides in order to see why orange oil was so much better. Through this research we also gained an understanding of packaging of existing pesticides.

RE-DESIGN: We decided to stick with her idea of using Orange Oil pesticide and set our focus on the package. How could this package appear more like a pesticide and less like a do it yourself kit? Through sketches and models we worked on modernizing the typical spray bottle to make it appear different at first glance to the consumer, and to invite them to engage with the information it displays.