prototyping the mini

Prototyping the Medida Mini was an exciting time. This phase presented an opportunity to see if our ideas and concepts performed in real-life scenarios as well as they performed in theory. Regardless of scale, it's always amazing to see a thing go from concept to reality. The outcome was that this build was far from perfect, but overall, we're pleased with how it performed and surprised by the flexibility of its simple format.

The Medida collection was envisioned to be a modern collection of furniture-style humidors. Similar to traditional humidors, the Medida does not contain any mechanisms for temperature control, and we utilized Boveda two-way humidity packs to control humidity levels. During prototyping, we specified this build based on requirements from one of our early supporters. The outcome was a humidor that met our performance expectations and was more transitional than we anticipated.

During shop testing, the humidor consistently held a temperature that was approximately three degrees below the ambient room temperature. The average relative humidity for one month was 68% RH. Subsequent end-user testing was done, and the tester noted that they infrequently opened the humidor, and in doing so, the box maintained an acceptable relative humidity level (65 to 72% RH) for 2 months without requiring replacement humidity control packs.

The goal was to create a humidor that would meld with the owner's sense of style. However, we assumed those preferences would be constrained to modern and minimalist stylings. We were wrong. The Medida controlled its internal environment well and proved to be a bit more flexible than we planned. The three Medida formats (the Medida, the Slim, and the Mini) have a standardized design platform with some customizable features. The overall size and shape of the humidors cannot be changed, but many of the details are customizable. Flexibility with those details made the difference.