Refills Reimagined
Overview
For the Mechanical Synthesis class I took in the spring of 2020, I was placed into a group of three students and tasked with manufacturing a product for essential workers in an open design project. The process involved conducting a user need interview, brainstorming ideas, designing the product using CAD, and manufacturing the final product. One of my teammates had a friend who worked at the fast food restaurant Culvers throughout the pandemic so we decided to interview her and find out ways her job could be made easier. I assisted in brainstorming ideas based on the needs she presented and came up with a COVID-19 safe way to refill soda cups which we then expanded on to create our final design.
Design Process
Our first task as a group was to brainstorm possible products before interviewing our user so that we could build upon them as we got their responses. We decided that since our user was a fast food worker, wearing a mask while working in the hot kitchen would cause a lot of discomfort. This led us to go into the interview with a preliminary design of a breathable, filterable mask that could be changed hands-free. For our full ideation process, please look for the PDF at the bottom of the page. After conducting the interview with our user, it was apparent to us that wearing a mask in the kitchen was not a concern whatsoever. Furthermore, most of the issues our user had were related to customers not following COVID guidelines when they entered the store such as disinfecting their tables or having to ask for a new cup for refills. A PDF of our interview notes can be downloaded under “Files”. The group then brainstormed new ideas that could address these problems, coming up with three different tiers of ideas: an obvious one, an interesting one, and a radical one. Our obvious idea was for a no contact cup handle that could be made out of cardboard and could be slipped onto the cup to allow customers to refill their cups without contamination. Our interesting idea was for a receipt to have instructions on the back for how to fold it into a bracelet so that customers would not have to worry about misplacing their receipt. Lastly, our radical idea was to have one way traffic enforcers to guide the customers around the restaurant. All three are depicted below in Figures 1A-C.
We then had to present these ideas to the course staff for feedback in our “Preliminary Design Review” found below. They suggested that it would be hard to demonstrate our interesting idea for a foldable receipt bracelet because it would take a lot of effort to teach customers how to fold their receipt into a bracelet and it would difficult to design a bracelet that would stay folded. They also suggested that our radical idea of the one way traffic enforcer would be a tripping hazard and would most likely end up in a lawsuit for the restaurant. This led us to continue with obvious idea for the no contact cup handle, but expand upon the design to add more utility and practicality. We wanted our product to be useful to a broader market so we decided to add a rim guard in addition to our handle guard to fit an array of soda machine levers. We also added a more ergonomic handle so that customers could use it to lift the cup when pouring. The red rim guard was on a hinge so that the whole mechanism could be opened to remove the cup with ease. All of these changes are reflected in our final CAD below.
Manufacturing
