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HIPPO ROLLER RE-DESIGN
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About Hippo Roller Re-Design
In January 2008, Project H began raising funds to donate and distribute 75 Hippo Rollers to a community in South Africa. The Hippo Roller has been in existence for 15 years, originally designed by two South African men and currently produced in South Africa, to facilitate the safe and efficient transport of water in the developing world. The original design costs $100 per unit, and holds approximately 22 gallons of water. For families in South Africa and many other parts of the developing world, water must be fetched multiple times throughout the day, the traditional methods (gerricans and buckets) only holding about 5-8 gallons at any time. The Hippo Roller's volume and ease of use allows households to spend less time fetching water, and more time going to school, running businesses, and with their families.
After delivering the 75 Hippo Rollers to Kgautswane, Project H also visited the manufacturing facility outside Johannesburg and identified an opportunity to improve the design for greater shipping efficiency and a lower price point. The rotationally molded plastic barrel had slight design flaws, and its lightweight hollow form made it expensive to ship to anywhere outside of South Africa. In the summer of 2008, Project H's San Francisco team partnered with D2M Inc., a full-service product design consultancy, and Engineers Without Borders San Francisco to undertake the re-design and re-engineering of the device.
D2M and EWB held several brainstorms to develop concepts for the redesign of the Hippo Roller for shipping efficiency. After user testing and multiple iterations of prototyping, the final re-design emerged as a two-part "capsule" version of the iconic original. Because of its two-part form, the re-designed Hippo could be nested and stacked, potentially even shipped with a water filter in the hollow area between the two parts. D2M also solved the technical challenge of designing a simple, low-cost, and rugged seal to ensure water tightness. The new version of the Hippo Roller improves shipping capacity by over 200%, and may also provide opportunities for distributed manufacturing in other parts of the world. Project H is currently raising funds to produce the tooling for the new roto-molding of the 2nd generation of the Hippo Roller.
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Project Locations: Johannesburg and San Francisco
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Project Team
Location: Johannesburg and San Francisco
Project Leaders: Ryan Duke, Ann Torres, Heather Fleming, Anurupa Rao, and Paul Dreyer
Contact: info@projecthdesign.org
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