Development of Self Watering Planter

Abstract: Both during and after the pandemic, the trend of biophilic design has reached maximum acceleration. One of the consequences being an increasing interest in gardening and plant care in general. Though not everybody might have so called ‘green fingers’, everyone should have the opportunity to try, and a product that facilitates horticulture is the self watering planter. IKEA of Sweden is looking into the development of a self watering planter specifically for outdoor use. The aim of this project is to develop a new product following the Democratic Design principles, incorporating circularity goals and overall creating a concept that fits the IKEA profile. Combining Ulrich and Eppingers concept development process introduced in Product Design and Development and the IKEA design principles mentioned before, research was conducted to find the customer needs as well as overall needs for the plants and product requirements in general. Internal benchmarking was performed by combing through IKEA catalogues from 1998 up until the printing concept was abandoned in 2021. External benchmarking was performed by searching for existing solutions on the market involving different kinds of self watering. Iteratively with the research, a concept generation in the form of sketching and 3D-modelling took place. Comparing with the needs, a first concept selection dismissed some irrelevant concepts. The next step was using the Democratic Design principles for concept scoring which lead to a final concept being chosen that could then be further developed regarding aspects such as simplicity, transportability and manufacturing. This resulted in a planter solution using the wicking method to water the plants consisting of four main parts and an optional plug. The solution can be both an insert and a planter by itself, it is easy to use, assemble and clean and can be stacked during transportation. Finally, the thesis project has resulted in a concept with much potential and IKEA is therefore suggested to continue the development of the self watering planter.