When they signed up to participate in the Natura Campus Challenge focused on developing new cleaning systems that revolutionize personal care rituals, Mariana Brolezzi Gomes Latarullo and Simone Ichiwaki, both with degrees in Biological Sciences, a master's degree and a PhD (in progress) in Biotechnology, along with Julia Döhler and Irit Becher, undergraduate students in Product Design at PUC/PR, did not imagine the extent of the experience they would accumulate in creating a new product. Beyond the technical aspects, the finalists of the Natura Campus Challenge had the opportunity to learn about consumer opinions on their ideas and confidently present the prototype they developed to a highly specialized team.
The Natura Campus Challenge “New Cleaning Technologies for Personal Hygiene,” concluded earlier this month, invited students from various fields to reflect on personal care rituals for the development of new cleaning processes, without the use of surfactants. Mariana Brolezzi Gomes Latarullo and Simone Ichiwaki were the winners, while Julia Döhler and Irit Becher secured second place. Both pairs were interviewed shortly before the end of the challenge and assured that they were very happy regardless of the placement they would achieve.
For Simone, the customer validation process was very important. “We conducted several interviews with people who would be the target audience for our product, and the responses surprised us a lot. We discovered that people expected not just cleanliness, but something more, like a pleasant fragrance, a feeling of relaxation, or something that would enhance the cleaning experience. We didn’t have the vision of how much this interview would influence the outcome,” she shares.
In Mariana's view, in addition to the contact with the public, the technical team at Natura was very helpful in the formulation process, and the opportunity to present the proposal to specialists brought a lot of experience. “It’s very enriching to have the opportunity to present to so many people who understand the subject well and be questioned about things we wouldn’t even think of,” she stated. According to her, all these stages of the challenge, like the customer validation mentioned by her partner Simone, made it possible to develop a more finalized product and not just a simple prototype.
As for the students Julia Döhler and Irit Becher, although they did not finish in first place, they stated that this was their first significant professional experience. “It was really cool to have the experience of doing something for the outside world, without having the professor by our side helping. We trained in college, but we had never worked this way,” said Irit.
For the duo, the biggest challenge was formulating the formula. “We are used to the prototyping part because that’s what we do in college. We handle that better. But the formulation was the biggest challenge,” she shared.
According to Julia, this was the first time they could follow the entire process of product creation. “And whether we like it or not, even when we work in product design, we will only take the outer part of the product, the packaging, never the formula and all those other things. It was something that added a lot for us,” she concluded.
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