Skip to content

Disruptive Medical Cannabis Inhaler Wins Gold IDA Award

Design 1st is celebrating thewin of two IDA Awards alongside our client Tafée Technologies for a medical cannabis inhaler called BOWLE.

Bowle is a multifunctional handheld aromatherapy device that encapsulates the ethos of simplicity. The device is purpose designed for the inhalation of medicinal herbs and organic compounds like eucalyptus flowers, tea leaves and cannabis, in the form and function of a drinking glass.

Render of the Tafée BOWLE: a clear glass cup on a silver vaporizer base

The International Design Awards (IDA) celebrate design visionaries who take risks to develop ground-breaking products. The IDAs attract global companies like Volvo, Logitech and Fitbit and winning an IDA is a prestigious recognition for any design team or product to accomplish.

The BOWLE won two IDA awards that reflect the product’s laser focus on positively impacting stigma and accessibility, which are major issues in vaporizer design.

The awards include:

IDA Gold Award: Design for Elders

  • Part of the Design for Society category, this award recognizes how BOWLE makes medical cannabis more accessible to seniors through an elegant, familiar, and intuitive design.
IDA Design Awards 2018 gold winner badge, Product Design for Society, Design for Elders
IDA Design Awards 2018 silver winner badge, Product Design for Society, Design for Public Awareness

IDA Silver Award: Design for Public Awareness

  • Also part of the Design for Society category, this award acknowledges BOWLE’s unique approach to normalizing medical cannabis usage and reducing stigma through familiar design.
Render of a clear cylindrical medical cannabis inhaler with an inner tube and metal base
medical-cannabis-inhaler-2-710x1024 (1)
Tafée BOWLE vaporizer disassembled into its glass cup, metal base, stem and mouthpiece ring
Render of the BOWLE vaporizer filled with water beside its stem and mouthpiece ring

An innovative medical device, the BOWLE seamlessly combines the familiar function and natural cohabit of consuming hot-or-cold beverages during aromatherapy with a vaporizer.

It opens cannabis use to a whole new segment of the population who want to experience aromatherapy in a different way. In addition to its radical design, Bowle also lists an array of leading features including an industry performance benchmark with a ready to use time of under two seconds from a cold start.

Person pouring water into the BOWLE glass vaporizer over ice beside lemons and a jar of herbs
Person pouring tea from a white teapot into the glass BOWLE vaporizer cup
Hand holding the BOWLE vaporizer glass filled with sparkling water and lemon beside an open book

“Tafée’s mission in creating simple solutions for the complex things that don’t work well stems from the goal to progressively influence the misinformation that conflates medicinal cannabis. The call to action was the void in purpose designed devices that are progressive and sustainable for the health-conscious matured adult. With the divergent design of Bowle, Tafée is positioned to serve consumers with a simple sustainable solution for the complex things that don’t work well. The things through which society can be positively impacted with.” – Bruno Ubakar. Officer, Tafée Technologies

For Design 1st, the BOWLE inhaler offered a unique challenge for the team, which has developed five cannabis related hardware devices, because of the complexity of imitating the natural act of drinking in combination with on-demand vaporizer technology.

The BOWLE is now getting ready to ramp up to volume production later this spring. You can learn about the Bowle at: http://tafee.com/