Teatime

I have currently been working on a project around the living room. From this I have been observing interaction in this room, I focused in particular on tea and the ritual surrounding making it. I wanted to encourage the use of a teapot and loose tea in order to create a more social situatuion, as opposed to one person in the kitchen making numerous mugs of tea from a kettle using tea bags. In British cuture tea drinking is a common thing yet no one seems to have time to do it properly. So many people choose to drink tea on the go from a cardboard cup as they have such busy schedules, rather than taking a brief break to socialize with their friends and family.

With a teapot it forces people to be together, I have been using a teapot for the past month. I have observed and recorded why people opt for the kettle and teabag over the tea pot. I have concluded it is due to the effort of getting the teapot and milk jug out along with cleaning it. I have created an elongated tea strainer and a lid that houses this and a spoon reducing mess and keeping everything neat along with eliminating the chore of cleaning the loose leaves out of the pot.

These images show my development process and prototypes.