Stay Dry

How many times have you been out and suddenly it get rained?

We all have this experience of getting surprised by rain when we are on hurry. The drops of the rain usually is the last thing needed when you have lots to do and ways to go. There are times that we are expected too look sharp and have neither the umbrella nor the rain jacket in your bag. Maybe you used to have one umbrella lying in your bag but change the bag at the last minute , or you are one of those who never think about the weather before leaving the home.

Then you may also be one of those who like to run to the nearest possible store to get another umbrella as cheap as possible, just to avoid getting wet. The downside is that you have spent money on another umbrella that may stay home the next time it rains.

How can we avoid getting wet when it surprisingly rains?

Based on weather-and-climate.com, the average annual amount of rainy days in Oslo is 161 of 365 days. Norwegian climate service centre shows that rainfall in Norway increased 115 percent in 2019 and Oslo experienced unbelievably more rain during 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Almost everyone of us frustrated from purchasing of another cheap umbrella that cracked from a small gust of wind in rainy days. Not only it is waste of money but also it is not sustainable. Umbrellas are not always satisfying, this applies to everything from size and quality to availability.

Umbrellas are often of poor quality. Some are designed to be small enough to fit in our bags, but are often of a lower quality so that they break easily. They are thrown along the road or left on the street as a trash. Not only that but some of them also are left behind in the buses. umbrellas with better quality most likely occupies a great part of our bags or keep one hand busy all the time.

In general umbrellas are generally becoming a consuming product. Therefore, we started to find a solution in a way to avoid unnecessary purchase. What if there was a way to stay dry on the go, just as easy as picking up a scooter. And you avoided the struggling of carrying around something extra in your bag when you really do not need it.

What is the solution?

The Idea is to find an umbrella to rent as soon as it rains. So the solution has two parts. An application to find the nearest umbrella available and pay the rental and some stations to peak the umbrellas and return them.

Using the Stay Dry Application stars by registering yourself and enabling location status while using the application so it uses your location to find the nearest station to pick up an umbrella. by using the application you get some good offers such as monthly fixed payment or better price on the number of times you pick up umbrellas. As you pay for the umbrella rental you get a QR code that unlocks the umbrella. If the umbrella is rented for a long period time of a day (8 hours is the suggestion) the usage of the umbrella would be free of charge for rest of 24 hours. It helps when you live a bit out of the city and you are far from the nearest station or you are so tired to change the direction to put it back in a station and get wet again before you get home though it is a really short journey.

If the used umbrella get missed you need to pay for an umbrella but if it is broken you can return it free of charge but you are asked to register it as a broken umbrella.

The stations are called Umbrella Point which can be find in front of all grocery stores, schools, hotels , shopping mals and every bus and metro stations. Umbrella point has a mechanism to dry and sanitise the wet used umbrella and special place for broken ones. umbrellas get unlocked by using QR code.

The umbrellas are of stronger quality so it lasts longer – they are also made of environmentally friendly material for more sustainability but if an umbrella is broken, It gathers repaired and back to the cycle.

Services:

• Maintenance of P-Points
• Maintenance and repair of broken umbrellas
• Further development
• Supports good causes (Environment, society, etc.)
• Customer service

Further Information

• This project was a university project in Høyskolen Kristiania to practice the Design Thinking aspects and it is not go further to the execution yet.
• The ideas are made and developed by the conversations with the user and it is tested by them as well.
• It finds similar services at least in Canada  and Japan.
• All the photos that are not mine are from unsplash.com