Four minutes. A mere four minutes is the amount of time you have to finish your shower before receiving negative reinforcement that you are wasting water. French design student Elisabeth Buecher has come up with two interesting and humorous inflatable shower curtains designed to encourage water conservation via negative associations.
Instead of using a buzzer or flashing light to remind people that they are over-using water, Buecher’s designs discourage water wastage beyond four minutes with an inflatable shower curtain that traps them in the shower or with plastic spikes that literally drive an inidivdual out of the shower.
“At home when people turn the water on in their shower, it would start a countdown and after four minutes the curtains would inflate automatically,” she explains.
The first design is called Spiky, allowing a quick four minutes of showering before the inflating spikes push you out of the shower. You can’t stand in the shower as the spikes occupy all the available space. “You have to get out and stop using too much water,” explains the designer.
The second design is aptly named the Trap. This design, also allows four minutes of showering time, but the difference is that it inflates around you and effectively traps you in the shower stall.
“These pieces are conceptual at the moment, for exhibitions and magazines, to strike people's mind and make them change their behavior when they take a shower,” explains Buecher.
The inflatable shower curtain designs are currently being exhibited with design collective Puff and Flock.
Via Treehugger
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