Flow Wins the Prestigious Red Dot Award

The personal pollution sensor from Plume Labs designed with frog has been chosen for this year’s Red Dot award.

NEW YORK—This year’s prestigious Red Dot award jury has chosen Flow, the personal pollution sensor from Plume Labs designed in collaboration with global design and strategy firm frog, for an award for excellence in product design. The Red Dot Award: Product Design, which dates back to 1955, appraises the best products created every year with the Red Dot awarded to products specifically recognized for their high design quality.

“Air pollution is a global crisis that affects everyone,” says Romain Lacombe, founder and CEO of Plume Labs. “Clearing up the air we breathe is not only a huge technology and policy undertaking, but it’s also an incredible design challenge.”

In the summer of 2016 Plume Labs approached frog’s London studio with the technology and an idea to develop a personal air pollution sensor that would to drive radical progress for clean air. The goal was to empower users to map the world’s air quality—bridging the gap between personal and collective, hardware and software, health and the environment.

“The core challenge behind the product design was to uncover the value required to get people and communities on-board and positive about personal air monitoring,” says Tom Peach, Lead Industrial Designer at frog.

“Through strong user centered design methodologies, we were able to humanize the technology, product, and data into one seamless convergent experience that would reflect changing attitudes towards air pollution and fit into people’s lives.”

frog, together with Plume Labs, infused these user insights into the company’s product design, user experience and branding. An entirely new concept, frog designed Flow using strong, durable materials that contribute to an engaging and easy-to-use experience. By addressing people’s perceptions and attitudes towards air pollution in the design, Flow empowers them to take control of their environmental health.

Going beyond industrial design and tackling the air pollution crisis with a solid foundation of data, Plume Labs set out to make the invisible, visible. To make environmental information truly accessible and empowering, Flow connects with a companion app to help individuals decrease their exposure and improve their environmental health. By tracking what they breathe, Flow users help crowdsource air pollutant levels across their city—empowering others to breathe cleaner air and supporting healthier communities worldwide.

Flow is now available for sale online at plumelabs.com/en/flow and in select retail locations in the United States and European Union.

About Flow, the personal air pollution sensor:
Buy online at: plumelabs.com/en/flow
Availability: USA, UK, France, and the rest of the EU
MSRP: $179
More information and high-resolution pictures at www.plumelabs.com/press

Flow Snippets:

• Flow is an intelligent device that fits into your daily life and helps you make the best air quality choices for yourself, your family, your community.
• By measuring real-time concentrations of NO2, VOC, PM2.5, and PM10, Flow and its companion app give you the minute-by-minute breakdown of the pollutants you were exposed to throughout your day.
• With the help of your phone’s GPS, Flow builds out the air quality map of all the places it’s been by your side. So the more you use Flow, the better it will help guide you towards clean air.
• There’s protecting yourself against air pollution, and there’s acting to end air pollution. Flow is a leap forward for mapping and understanding the air pollution crisis. We aim to give everyone the power to act by spreading knowledge.