Background
The popularity of internet has been increasing considerably in the 21st century, and purchasing in non-physical store has thus become the mainstream of consumption pattern. By investigating through our online questionnaire, we’ve found that at least 95.5% of customers do care what happened with the items they bought during the transportation process.
The change of purchasing habit make transporting very crucial. Buyer and seller usually do not know what kind of environment had the cargoes gone through. As a result, a portion of defectives were damaged or deteriorated through the transporting process, but others already had flaws as soon as they were produced. And this lead to a controversial situation: how can we determine who’s responsible for this?
We thus aim on three aspects, which are the factory, the transporting company, and the consumers, to carry out our questionnaire survey. The results show that there are three primary reasons that give rise to product damaged or deteriorated, which are external impacts, high temperature, and sunlight (UV light). Since whether the product is damaged by external force is obviously to be seen just by looking at its outlook, we chose to design a sticker to sense temperature and UV light. The sticker sticks on the boxes or products that need to be transport, and when the sticker changes its color, it means that the process of transportation is not adequate and so needs to be changed.
What is “Detecoli”?
We intend to invent a STICKER called “Detecoli”—a word we coin by combining “detect” and “Ecoli”—which changes color in environments of excess sunlight or inadequate temperatures. It will be attached to the product during manufacture and thus is able to monitor the whole process of transportation. Detecoli alerts consumers to possible deterioration or contamination by changing color, and serves as a guarantee of quality.
Operation Model
We designed a device to sense UV lights and high temperature, and we can confirm if it is working. When the device is working, and has not been exposed to UV light nor high temperature, it will be in the color of light green. When the device is working, and it has been exposed to excess UV lights, it will turn red; and if it has been under high temperature for too long, it will turn blue. However, if the device is not working at all, it won’t be in color (=white). The design of the device can also prevent e-coli from getting out, and the e-coli in it will be Sterilized after use. At the end, it’s free for disposal.
Color changing system
In normal conditions, the color of the sticker will be light green, of which indicates “safe”; nonetheless, if the products were exposed under sunlight or temperature higher than 37 degrees Celsius, the color will change drastically into red or blue respectively, of which indicates “not safe”. The longer the sticker was exposed under bad condition, the darker will the colors blue or red will be. The cause of both color is the synthesis of chromoprotein. Chromoproteins are very stable, which means that the color will last for a long period of time.
Target
The principal application for our sticker is to monitor the WHOLE transporting process. This is, from the second that the product was made by the factory, to the moment that the customer received the product (even until the customer finishes using the product), every moment was monitored. This not only guarantee the quality of the products, but helps to solve the conflict between the factory and the transport company. When the customers received the products with the stickers on it color changed, it indicates that the transporting condition is not acceptable. Likely, the transport company can also use this kind of stickers to prove to the factory that their employees do treat every cargo properly. This way, we can avoid consumer dispute and the problems of compensation, and add more goodwill for the company.
In addition, what we emphasize is to ensure EVERY product that have our stickers on and to maximize the accuracy of quality control. We extend the monitoring process from initially only in the factory to eventually the customers’ hands, making customers no longer buy, or use, the damaged product caused by inappropriately transporting or storing. The most considerable benefits of this bio-sticker are “long-term monitor” and “cumulative”. The factors of the harmful environments accumulate, and as soon as they surpass the limitation, it activates the color changing process. Still more, the basic material of this bio-sticker is e-coli. As the fact that e-coli replicates itself extremely rapidly, the cost of the sticker will substantially decrease.
