What if your air-freshening spray and your humidifier had a baby? It would look quite like the ZEN. Designed to be as easy to use and as effective as an air-freshener spray, but sit on your table-top, running like a fragrance diffuser/humidifier, the ZEN combines the best of both worlds. The most efficient way to deploy a fragrance is to nebulize it. Turn it into a superfine mist of droplets suspended in midair… a single drop can easily fill up a small-sized room with a fresh fragrance. Perfumes, deodorants, and air fresheners use it… but fragrance diffusers and humidifiers rely on more complicated techniques that involve water, electricity, and heating components that often complicate the procedure in the name of automation. ZEN simply introduces nebulizing to the latter, taking the spray-technique and turning it into an appliance that efficiently, and without human intervention, deploys scent without any complicated techniques, procedures, and parts. Made out of parts like ceramic, rubber, and wood, the ZEN doesn’t lean on the plastic-heavy approach. Designed to be uncomplicated, conscientious, and useful, the ZEN looks the part. A tilted cylinder with a soothing textured wood panel on the top, the ZEN looks slick and modern, rather than looking anything like the legacy/heritage styled diffusers that harness the Oriental vibe. Within the cylinder lies a generic 5ml bottle (you can even use store-bought bottles) that you can fill with an essential oil of your own choice. The screw-top bottle screws into the nebulizing component that uses a small orifice and an air-pump to break big drops of oil into a fine mist that exits the ZEN from its outlet at the top. Covering the outlet is a rotating arm that does a full 360° rotation, acting as a timer as well as a cover for the mist outlet. The arm takes a full hour to complete one rotation, allowing the diffuser to continuously diffuse an aroma for an hour. Press down on the wooden panel and the arm swiftly finishes its round and covers the outlet, ending the diffusion process. The tilted cylinder allows you to point your ZEN to the center of your room, so the mist covers the entire space equally. Using modern technology along with the ancient benefits of aromatherapy, the ZEN is a perfect hybrid diffuser, with its neomodern name and contemporary style. Designed to be effective, and more importantly less of a hassle than other diffusers with their complicated setups and components, the ZEN is literally plug-to-use and touch-to-activate. After all, why should aromatherapy every be complicated?! Designer: Yves Zhang ZEN is the unique combination between innovative design and usage simplicity. The essential oils are directly dispensed from the bottle to help you benefit from dry aromatherapy. Back to basics: no need for an app or complicated program to set it up, just use your finger and enjoy! ZEN will be offered in a number of colors and designs to help it fit in with its surroundings. Accessories such as ceramic cover and handles will also be sold separately in case you want to change it up. Possibilities are endless. Turn the handle for the desired timing. Same metrics as any clock. Press on the panel if you want to stop it. Once the product is working, the handle takes back its original position. It takes 60 minutes for a full turn. Most 5 or 10ml essential oil bottles, with screw caps, found in store are compatible with ZEN. For your convenience ZEN comes with an empty 5ml glass bottle which can be filled with your desired aroma. ZEN is also much more efficient than classic ultrasonic diffusers. Can be used in rooms up to 20 square meters (215 square feets). The essential oils are dispensed in tiny particles through the small hole in the wooden panel. ZEN is a dry diffuser, meaning it does not need water to function. ZEN uses the Venturi effect as shown above. “I draw the inspiration from the Japanese zen garden, in which, rocks are placed upright like mountains. White sand represents water, emptiness and distance. The top of the diffuser recreates a zen garden. The handle symbolizes a mountain, and the carved wood surface represents water. When you turn the handle, all the visual elements will turn into smell. This will be a trigger for your imagination. The other basic concept of the design starts from the observation of how people interact with scents. I find that no matter what you are doing — aroma therapy or you just want fresh air in your space — the most important factor of the whole experience is TIME. Therefore, I designed a clock like timer on the top of the diffuser, trying to make the user experience easy , smooth and precise. Every time you look at the diffuser, even when you are far away from it, you can easily see how long it’s been working and how much time is left.” Yves Zhang, ZEN product designer Francois is the one with the engineering background. He spent half of his career in China where he worked in production, sourcing & quality. He likes movies, cooking and a good boat cruise on the Amsterdam canals. Yves is THE product designer. Graduated from Central St Martin’s design school in London, Yves worked for different industrial and retail companies in consumer electronics. But what’s important to him are his two cats Georges & Michael as well as his Netflix account 🙂