AIRQUA

In Southeast Asia, flash floods are frequent and devastating. When infrastructure collapses, communities are surrounded by water they cannot drink. If clean water doesn't arrive in time, people either drink contaminated water and get sick, or dehydrate. The existing solutions all depend on supply chains that break during the exact moments they're needed most.

We designed a device that harvests water from humid air. In post-flood conditions, humidity exceeds 80%, which is ideal for atmospheric water generation. The device condenses airborne moisture, filters and sterilizes it, producing approximately 300ml of clean water per hour.

We conducted 50+ user interviews and went through 30+ hardware iterations. Designing for low-literacy users meant every interface decision had to be rethought from scratch. We deployed a working prototype in Thailand for field testing with local communities.

• Harvard President's Innovation Challenge, 1st Place (awarded by President Alan Garber)
• Harvard Innovation Lab initial funding
• Working prototype deployed in Thailand with real community use
• Discontinued due to unresolved energy scaling (hand-crank was the only off-grid power source; alternatives were not viable)

The gap between a working prototype and a product that survives real conditions is enormous. We had the technology working, but couldn't solve the energy problem at the scale needed. This taught me that constraints in the deployment environment are more important than constraints in the lab. It also changed how I think about user research: if the person using your product can't read the instructions, you haven't designed the product yet.