we design for life
Water for the world.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
And to this day, you’ll still find the Z1000 system in operation like the day we made it.