What?
Dot (£9, josephjoseph.com) is a drink receptacle with sprung ratchet cap. When rotated, cap locks into five consecutive positions, marked with a rising series of glyphs to track refills.
Why?
Get fluids, or try dying.
Well?
Reminded of the fortune that rapper 50 Cent has amassed by flogging artificially sweetened water, I hoped this week’s gadget was a promotional tie-in on behalf of Dot Cotton, the chain-smoking nonagenarian from EastEnders. Sadly, Dot by Joseph Joseph is not. It is closer in spirit to Fearne Cotton, with packaging that bleats on about hydration and energy and a healthy lifestyle until I want to fill the thing with vodka. Yet Dot is aimed at people like me; people who have a drinking problem. Specifically the problem that water is boring. The idea is that it helps you meet “your hydration goals” by gamifying the entire process. My hydration goals begin and end at “not dying”, but I’m listening.
Every time you fill Dot up, it adds a little red dot to a viewing window in the lid. When you clear four dots, you have drunk 2400ml of the good stuff. It’s not a very sophisticated game. At best, it’s a training round of Connect Four, due to the fact I have no opponent to interfere with my accumulation of dots, and only one direction to stack them in. Must everything be a game, anyway? Why will I only attend to my basic life-support systems when they are controlled by the arbitrary collection of balls?
As if to ram the point home, the device resembles a large baby’s bottle – though an elegant one, with a goldilocks drinking aperture that is not too narrow, not too wide. I do wonder if the gamification is counterproductive. I find that by 11pm every night I have only collected three dots. In an attempt to notch the final mark and clear the board, I skull a litre of water before bed, an ill-fated effort that has me up all hours of the night, urinating. Having said that, I am drinking more. Besides, what’s the alternative? Stay healthy, or … what? (It’s the dot dot dot I’m worried about.) So OK, let’s play. Balls: I am in your hands.
Redeeming features?
Eight glasses a day never sounded scientific, anyway. Are we talking shots, highballs or coupes? Do water-based mixers count?
Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard?
Fountain of youth. At least, fountain of slightly better skin. 3/5
