Wiino

The first smart wine thermometer ever

Wiino is the first intelligent wine thermometer ever designed. It helps experts, amateurs and wine lovers to know the exact temperature of the wine without having to open the bottle. Wiino was conceived as an intelligent, intuitive and innovative product in a truly conservative field where there is a great need for new ideas to take the sensory experience to another level. This intelligent thermometer is accompanied by a propeller-shaped ring that not only helps the sensor to be held in place, but also acts as a drip saver.

This product, whose use is accompanied by a specially developed app, represents the first result of the design and development work of Forture, the newborn startup that I founded with some collaborators.

Why is there a need for a smart thermometer?

The serving temperature of a wine is often overlooked. However the serving temperature is extremely important and crucial to unlocking the full flavour and aromas of a wine. It is important to remember that each wine has an ideal serving temperature and one temperature is not suitable for all.If white wine is served too cold, flavors and aromas will be masked. Too warm and they become flat and flabby. Red wine will seem excessively tannic and acidic if served too cold. Too warm, they will become overly alcoholic and lifeless.

Market overview

The instruments currently available on the market to measure the temperature of wine is divided into two macro-categories: contact thermometers and infrared thermometers. The former measure the temperature when they are immersed in the wine, the latter can instead measure the temperature through the bottle, positioning a pointer to the liquid.

In the first case there is an unelegant dynamic, which is not necessarily appreciated by the customer, which involves the insertion of an external body inside a liquid that will be ingested and that has a rather slow response time. In the second case there is the advantage of a compact object, which makes a quick measurement, but which often has little to do with the aesthetics of that world and which is often not very versatile and imprecise in use.

Target definition

We have identified a primary target, that of wine amateurs, and a secondary target, that of wine experts. Both need a system that allows them on the one hand to be sure of the characteristics of the product they have acquired, and on the other to ensure that they are guaranteeing their customers the best possible experience.Wine lovers are often inclined to buy tools to help them cultivate their passion. Experts, on the other hand, need specific equipment to perform their job and sometimes they can invest in purchasing a product to be offered to customers as a guarantee of attention to them.

So we imagined a mixed positioning in which the majority of sales are aimed at independent consumers, and a share instead is aimed at all those realities related to the world of wine and interested in providing a classy service to their package.

Improving the user experience

There are already products on the market that have proved to be game-changers in this sector. What differentiates them is not only the choice of materials and an attractive design, but the design of a new user experience that can take the way of consuming wine today to another level.

First design concepts

The first goal was to understand which was the best system for collecting drops, secondly I tried to understand which was the best method of displaying the temperature without making the object cumbersome, but trying to integrate it as seamlessly as possible with the geometry of the bottle.

Concept development & first prototyping

Moving from the sketchbook to the 3D I started to verify the first concepts, rethinking several times the structure, the functionality, the mechanics and the usability. After developing a dozen conceptual solutions, I focused on the one that seemed to me to be the most practical and aesthetically pleasing. Working with a simple geometry would have been easy to integrate the internal components and would not have diverted too much attention from the bottle.

Wiino – Smart wine thermometer

With patented technology and design, Wiino is the first smart wine thermometer of its kind. It consists of a steel helix ring capable of adapting to the neck diameter of each bottle, a second sponge ring so as to absorb safely and cleanly any unexpected drop. Finally, the heart of the thermometer is a sensor that, embedded in a milled aluminum case, thanks to an algorithm designed specifically, detects the exact temperature of the wine and transmits it clearly and intuitively on an LCD display.

Look & Feel

The choices regarding the design of the product were made with the intention of creating an object that, despite its small size, was able to express a strong sense of reliability and beauty.
Wiino has an outer shell made of anodized aluminum, painted in three shades that recall the world of wine: burgundy, straw yellow and midnight blue. The metallic mirror ring contains and protects the LCD display, while on the back of the object a thin smoked glass hides the sensor that makes the measurement.

Where the magic happens

It’s inside the object that the magic happens. A small but powerful specially designed PCB communicates with the measurement system, detecting the temperature in seconds and allowing it to be repeated each time the side button is pressed. All this for more than 10,000 times and a battery life of up to 2,000 hours.

Brand identity & Packaging

To elaborate the visual identity of the project I started from the most characteristic aspect of the object, that is the spiral ring, and I tried to reinterpret its form to associate it with a fluid, trapped inside a structure similar in shape and proportions. From here, after having elaborated several proposals, I developed the one that I think best represented the freshness of the product.

The name “Wiino” obviously refers to wine, but also to the digital world and secondly it resonates remotely as an affirmation, “We know”, that is that we know what is the right temperature of your wine and thanks to Wiino you can know it too.

Wiino App

“Once I’ve bought Wiino, how do I know at what temperature to serve the wine I just bought?”

The Wiino app works as a large catalog in which most of the wines on the market are listed. Just search the name of the wine, filter the search through tags on its properties or scan the label and there appears a tab where first is indicated the serving temperature and then all the informations about the history and characteristics of that product.