At D2M, my first job as senior industrial designer was to tackle a redesign of D2M’s UV water purifier. The existing product had no name, low sales and looked like something to store nuclear waste rather than an home appliance.

The challenge was to make it look appropriate for the intended environment which was the home kitchen.

Originally, I was asked to start fresh and completely re-think the product down to the architecture of the main components; The UV light source, the ozone creation device and the filtering system.

I did allot of schematic style sketches in this phase to determine the best configuration to focus on while keeping in mind the look and feel for the kitchen environment.

At that point in the the CEO realized that they would have to narrow the project to just a refresh of the existing design and that we needed to reuse as existing reservoir tool due to the high cost of the original tooling. I was then asked to find a way to accomplish the refresh without changing any of the tooling! A very tough task.

I invented a process where the existing reservoir would be mechanically sanded with a horizontal texture and partially metalized. The result was a look that was exactly like a brushed stainless kitchen appliance in the off condition, but in the on condition, the UV light would shine thru, telling the user that the device was in operation without the need for additional lighting.

The resulting changes to the design allowed Zuvo to be a commercial success and reach nationwide distribution in stores such as Ferguson and Brookstone.