Product & technical discovery
Turning the connected-bottle idea into explicit questions about the scan moment, physical access, product data, user accounts, and future experiences.
Connected consumer product · 0 → 1
Connecting every bottle to a digital identity.
A connected-bottle system combining NFC, cloud software, and selective blockchain records.
- Client
- Cãna
- Stage
- 0 → 1
- Status
- Delivered · IP transferred
- Engagement
- 2019
01 / Connected product concept
Turning a physical bottle into a digital interface.
Cãna wanted each bottle to carry a unique, verifiable identity without compromising the physical product experience or forcing every part of the customer journey onto a blockchain.
We designed and built a connected-bottle system that linked a protected NFC tag to a consumer application, cloud services, and a selective on-chain product record. The resulting product and intellectual property were delivered and transferred to Cãna at the end of the engagement.
02 / How we helped
From an ambitious idea to a buildable system.
The challenge crossed software, hardware, packaging, security, and customer experience. Our role was to make those parts work as one coherent product.
Connected product architecture
Designing how the consumer application, backend, cloud database, NFC tag, and blockchain record would communicate.
Bottle identity model
Defining the product, bottling, blend, bottle, and provenance data needed to give each physical bottle a digital counterpart.
Blockchain feasibility
Evaluating network options, storage limits, transaction costs, and the practical boundary between permanent and changeable data.
Cloud & backend foundation
Building the service layer for product lookup, richer brand content, account infrastructure, and future application capabilities.
NFC interaction design
Working within a 144-byte tag and a protected bottle seal to make the post-purchase scan intentional and useful.
Proof-of-concept strategy
Reducing the first validation to a small set of bottles so the core interaction could be tested before committing to scale.
Delivery & IP transfer
Packaging the working product foundation and transferring its intellectual property to the founder for the product’s next stage.
03 / The physical constraints
144 bytes, a sealed cork, and a permanent ledger.
The product had to connect a physical bottle, an NFC tag with very limited capacity, a consumer application, cloud data, and a public blockchain. Each layer introduced a different constraint around cost, security, permanence, and usability.
The scan also had to happen at the right moment. Protecting the tag until the bottle was opened made the digital experience part of ownership, while changing what information could safely live on the tag itself.
144-byte NFC tagProtected post-purchase scanOn-chain transaction costEditable brand contentBottle-level identity
04 / Engineering judgment
Use each technology only where it earned its place.
Keep the architecture hybrid
Permanent product facts could be verified on-chain while imagery, content, accounts, and evolving customer data remained flexible in the cloud.
Use the tag as a key, not a database
The NFC payload identified the bottle and opened the experience; the fuller product record lived in systems designed to store and serve it.
Design around the moment of opening
The protected tag made scanning a deliberate post-purchase interaction rather than an exposed pre-purchase feature.
Prove the loop before scaling it
The first build focused on a small set of bottles and the complete scan-to-record flow before expanding the number of identities or features.
05 / Connected bottle system
One product spanning packaging, software, and provenance.
The system used the physical bottle as its entry point, then combined verifiable production facts with richer digital content and room for future consumer experiences.
01Physical product
Bottle identityProtected sealNFC tagMinimal payload
02Consumer experience
Scan & readProduct detailsOrigin storyAccount foundation
03Application platform
Product APIAuthenticationCloud databaseBrand content
04Proof layer
Product recordBottling dataBlend & bottle IDsBlockchain lookup
05Designed extensions
Cocktail contentStockist discoverySaved bottlesProvenance events
06 / Delivery & handoff
Built, delivered, and transferred.
We completed the connected-product foundation and transferred the resulting product and intellectual property to Cãna. That gave the founder ownership of the architecture, implementation, and path toward future experiences.
Its later evolution and current production use sit outside our involvement. This case study therefore focuses on the constraints we resolved, the system we built, and the decisions that made the concept technically viable.
Engagement2019
Stage0 → 1
RelationshipBuild & IP transfer
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