we design for life
Water for the world.
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General Electric Environmental (formerly Zenon) needed to give streamline their sustainable water filtration system for clean and simple usability. We built the Zenon Zeeweed 1000 and Z-Box systems- robust units designed for longevity and ease of use.
Services Offered
Manufacturing help
Product Design
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The Client
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From the beginning our work with Zenon was connected to our vision as a company. We approached Zenon because they shared our belief in melding high technology with clean, human-centric design to produce solutions that impact the world tangibly and positively.
Prior to our involvement, Zenon developed a proprietary system of membrane water filtration, employing thousands of polymer strings with a hollow membrane surface in a process that produced clean, EPA-certified wate. As these strands were grouped together into cassettes, the modular Zenon filtration system could allow a filtration plant to scale their operations over time.
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What Zenon needed was an affordable and easily manufactured casing that aesthetically matched their innovative process. Stringently engineered, tested, and patented, this industrial scale water filtration system -responsible for bringing clean drinking water to entire municipalities- was in need of some creative refinement.
Our Process
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Working on a water filtration system is no small industry; more than 40 engineers, mid-level managers, outside consultants, and a CEO to work with, all with their own areas of expertise, goals, and particular needs. With the scale of operation so large, a vastly important aspect of the project’s success lay in ensuring our relationship with other parties was more than just basically productive- we had to create a climate of true creative collaboration.
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Using our ability to streamline and manage projects allowed us to free up the time and resources required to be truly innovative. In this case, that meant designing a system that not only functionally worked, but respected the involvement of workers in the process of filtration and made their lives earsier. Dystil made a full scale prototype of the filtration system, tested it stringently, and finally progressed to a final product.
The Result
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The project stood at the intersection of technology and human-centric design. This is where Dystil excels, and managing that well is what led to our solution, the Z1000, receiving a Silver IDEA Award for excellence in design.
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And to this day, you’ll still find the Z1000 system in operation like the day we made it.