What is home? Is it a feeling? A person? A place? How do we bring home to the user? This was the SCAD StartUp theme for 2019, a week-long event where multidisciplinary design teams come together to ideate, build, and pitch a solution to several industry experts acting as judges. Out of the 47 competing teams, hyggehome was awarded 2nd place.
Problem Space
Home is both at once a simple and complex concept. The definition of home never stops changing, and can be tangible and intangible. Home can be a person, a place, an object, a pet. Home is unique, just like the elements that surround it. We have created an eCommerce subscription box solution that evokes nostalgia and comfort, allowing our consumers to keep an olfactory memory bank so that they may return home through smell over and over again.
What is Hygge?
Hygge, Oxford Dictionary's 2016 word of the year, is described to encompass a feeling of cozy contentment and well-being through enjoying the simple things in life. Others state hygge is the Danish secret of happiness and work-life balance. After initial research, we found that home encompasses these feelings of comfort and unique scent. We decided to focus on smell and how to deliver home to the consumer through it.
Our Target Audience
Everyone has a home. Although Hyggehome is available to any audience, our primary focus is on Generation X. Consumers from this group value personalization, are regular hybrid online and in-store shoppers, and make up the majority of the demographic base for the subscription box market. Born during a generational divide, Gen X individuals care for family members surrounding both sides of this gap. They often value home in many regards, known for wanting a good work/home balance in life.
Our Opportunity
Research indicates that scent is the most powerful sense in recalling memory and the emotional connections we associate with them. By recreating the unique smell of personal objects that our consumers link to home, we can keep this memory forever. Through Hyggehome and preservation of scent, we can bring you home.
How It Works
We bring aromatherapy to the next level in four easy steps.
Our Solution, Your Home
Through Aryballe Technologies, Neose Pro™ olfactory technology can extract the biomolecular sample from the sent device. Our in house scent technicians are able to identify the ingredients Neose Pro™ analyzes through the use of odor imaging, data processing, and odor identification. We carefully recreate the chemical composition and provide a multitude of aromatherapy product options.
hyggehome
Start-Up competition tech involving the discovery and implementation everyday solutions under the theme of "What is home?"
My Role
Research Co-lead, Product Presentation & Pitch, UX design, Concept Development
Timeline
1 week, SCAD StartUp 2019
Deliverables
CAD Model, Physical Prototype, Product Pitch