so nature tells us to drink water when we're thirsty, why would i drink water when I am not thirsty? is my body stupid? Im trying to understand why i should drink more than what my body requests
@orliesaurus thank you for opening this discussion. It is true, that our body should remind us to drink water, however of you neglect these calls of nature for a longer period, than our system adapts and lives with less then needed but it soon starts to show the need for water thorugh other symptoms like headache, bad mood, no energy etc. I personally am great example of how someone can go on without drinking one glass of water a day (was more into sweet beverages). In this case it is good to start drinking more water intentionally. Luckily our bodies adapt quickly so in some time it will again start to remind you to drink water with the simple 'I am thirsty sign'.
Awesome product, I love the idea!
How did you find working with a physical product this time over a software product ( Diet Pointed ) ?
Have there been any big challenges along the way?
@edmarriner Thank you for the kind words. Yes, developing hardware is completely different comparing to software. The first challenge was of course to conduct a research in order to evaluate the importance of the issue Ulla is solving. The biggest challenge then was to translate the psychological attitude people have to drinking water or the reason why they don’t drink it into a code and hardware design and link them together.
Our goal was to make a device that makes people’s lives easier – this is why we had to make a stand-alone device that works completely on its own, no charging, power effectiveness was important. For this reason many, many UX testing had to be done in order to launch Ulla - a device that we believe solves a particular problem. Studies have shown our users drink 2-3x more water now than they did before Ulla.
Then of course iterations and prototype testing takes much more time - we created a so called »evaluation group« consisted of people all over the world who were our prototype testers. And of course there is a tooling design, production line management, power management, syncing all parts delivery times etc. we had to learn everything from the scratch. We could talk about this for days as you can see. :):):)
I did a similar project a few years back. It would be really interesting to focus your project around our older generation. Dehydration is a huge problem among our elderly, and drinking enough water could prevent so many things, especially in that target group.
@rikvandonselaar thank you for this! Would love to hear more about your project.
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@cicagajic Great product. We are now producing a service for the aging population and I am sure we can collaborate for new features with this product. Can you give me your email so we can contact?
Dear Product Hunters
you know that feeling it is almost 3 p.m., you have downed few lattes but made no sips of water and exhaustion just started kicking in? 60 % of people can relate to this issue (we asked about 120.000 of them in our research), because we just simply forget to drink water, even though it seems like the easiest thing to do. This is the reason why we invented Ulla - a smart device that will turn any bottle or a glass into a hydration reminder in less than 5 seconds and will make sure you stay hydrated throughout your busy day.
Thank you @tomazstolfa for hunting us down and thank you @producthunt.
P.S. A special surprise for all hunters is waiting on our website www.ulla.io. Don’t miss it.
Damjan & Cica
I've used numerous drinking-reminder Apps including some Koreans and always end up forgetting about them.
This is great, though it requires some way of keeping track how often you took a sip and perfect would be to also track the amount.
@andmitsch thank you. Before we started designing Ulla we have tested all water drinking apps there are, we still forgot to drink water, especially the sound alerts were sometimes too much to handle with all the other sounds our phone is producing every few minutes:):):
Regarding the tracking – we found out, there is a segment of people who need it and are willing to take some time to analyze their water drinking patterns. On the other hand there is a segment that we found out needs only a reminder (no fiddling around with any settings on any phone app). These are usually people who drink less than 3 glasses of water a day or just a half of the bottle. All they want is to drink more water and they know they achieved it by visiting the toilet more frequently :):):)
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@cicagajic@andmitsch Those alerts are usually not really reliable as well. I also agree that the visual reminder might already be enough to suck someone in again to take another sip and this might already be enough to ensure a right amount. This is also a great timing for Christmas - not very personal, but everyone actually struggles with the most healthy thing we can do to our body: drinking water.
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