Unspillable Cup

Problem

It is much too easy to spill a cup. It is one of those common annoyances that everyone has had to deal with. My goal is to design a drinking cup that will not spill and is just as easy to drink from as a normal shaped one.

Design Brief

Designer: Jacob Wassell

Target Consumers

This product would be geared towards children 3-7 years old, studies show these are the ages when children are most likely to spill grape juice onto your nice white carpet. The alternative to cups that will spill is an unspillable cup with a simple, good-looking design that is ideally just as easy to drink from as a normal cup or glass.

Research

Spilling a cup is a common annoyance that everyone experiences, so there is already some progress being made in this area. A guaranteed way to avoid a spill is to use a cup with a lid or sipper nozzle, however those can mess up the alignment of your teeth with too much use and the simplicity of a one-piece drinking glass is taken away. Many other cups that were harder to spill but did not have a lid had either a wide base or a simple balancing mechanism.

Generate Alternative Solutions

Constraints:

Must be easy to hold
Must be easy to drink from
Must be one solid piece (no lids, caps, or movable parts)
Product should be appealing to kids (bright colors, made of plastic)

Using these constraints and putting them into a decision making matrix helped me to decide the best course of action to take on the design. The idea of a wide-based cup fit all of the constarints, which gave me an idea to start with for designing.

While designing, I made sure to incorporate a wide base so that a greater percentage of the liquid would be held in the bottom than in the top. A lower center of gravity will increase stability. I decided to go with the idea of the stabilizing ring since the design is the most kid friendly and fun.

Select and Develop the Solution

The wide base and stablilzing ring should make the cup able to take a sizable bump without being tipped over.

Create A Prototype

Promotional Flyer

Improvements

The idea of the unspillable cup is still not fully developed. Some possible improvements are:

Stronger stablilzing ring for a reduced risk of breaking
Include a rubber bumper on the ring to decrease shock when preventing spills
Streamlining the design