THE PERFECT COFFEE MUG Team 5: Luke Allen Paul Chichura Andres Gonzalez Raja Suryadevara Junfeng Ma 8 October 2014

Over 3 million people in the USA have a disability in their hands and/or forearms, including paralyzations, orthopedic impairments, either congenital or injury related. About one in every 2000 new born babies will have some form of a limb deficiency; it may be absent parts of fingers or toes, complete absence of all four limbs or something in between. Another larger group of children lose limbs in accidents, especially to lawn mowers, trains, all terrain vehicles, and motorcycles; or to disease, including cancer.

Why Do This Project?

We hope that by designing and making this coffee cup we are able to help people with one finger enjoy a cup of coffee, tea, and any other beverage with more ease and accessibility. We hope to accomplish this in such a way that the cup is affordable, user-friendly, and safe.

THE DESIGN PROCESS

The Customer Is Always Right! Needs of the customers were obtained through surveys, focus groups, and internal group discussions These needs allow us to make as adequate a product as possible They provide a basis for key design elements and the product’s features

Narrowing the Needs To better hone in on the final product, we need to determine the top 5 needs “Extraneous needs” or unviable design choices (due to economic constraints, etc.) must be taken out of the creative process To do this, we use the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Creating Attributes Using data from surveys, etc., We came up with 5 first- layer attributes (user-friendly, portable, usable, cleanable, and aesthetically appealing) for the coffee mug Under each first-layer attribute, we create multiple second-layer attributes

Customer Needs Hierarchy 1) User Friendly (0.322) 1.1)Easy to maintain (0.083, 0.258) 1.2)Safe to hold (0.122, 0.379) 1.3)Durable (0.041, 0.126) 1.4)Temperature resistant (0.046, 0.143) 1.5)Adequate volume (0.030, 0.093) 2) Portable (0.169) 2.1)Lightweight (0.073, 0.429) 2.2)Compact (0.073, 0.429) 2.3)Easy to store (0.024, 0.143) 3) Usable (0.382) 3.1)Universal (0.104, 0.272) 3.2)Controllable (0.156, 0.408) 3.3)Low spillage (0.083, 0.217) 3.4)Well insulated (0.039, 0.103) 4) Cleanable (0.061) 4.1)Dishwasher safe (0.030, 0.484) 4.2)Hand Washable (0.014, 0.226) 4.3)Stain Resistant (0.018, 0.290) 5) Aesthetically Appealing (0.064) 5.1)Attractive contours (0.035, 0.538) 5.2)Appealing colors (0.021, 0.333) 5.3)Varying pictures and designs (0.008, 0.128) This is the hierarchy that was derived

Narrowing Down Some More… To narrow the needs even more, we took the top 10 second-layer attributes (based on their weightings) and performed another AHP function on them After doing this, the top 5 second layer attributes were determined

And Now for Some Concepts With the top 5 attributes for the mug selected, we now have to come up with some basic design concepts that may (or may not) be present in the final design To come up with concepts, we go through a process called concept generation

Concept Generation: Clarity of the Problem The first thing we do is to clearly state what the problem we are trying to resolve is This focuses our view so that we can come up with more effective ideas After this, we are able to search for possible solutions in other places

Concept Generation: External Searching For inspiration and ideas upon which to improve, we read various literature on the subject of coffee mugs (especially literature concerning mugs for the disabled) To make sure we are not infringing on others’ intellectual property, we research various patents on coffee mugs (luckily, we were not)

Concept Generation: Internal Searching To winnow through all of the information we collected, we discuss what concepts are most important and relevant to the problem at hand Open discussion is had and differing ideas are encouraged so that all possibilities are thoroughly considered

Classifying the Concepts After viable concepts have been obtained, we need to classify them This organizes the concepts and makes the concept selection process much easier To do this, we use such things as a classification tree and concept selection table

CONCEPT SELECTION AND TESTING

Concept Classification Tree

Concept Combination Table A B C D

CONTINUEREVISE

Difficulties Faced Finding the patents. Making the prototype. Concept score table.

Summary The The design that we made is not only for the disabled but is also universal. This This design is light in weight, highly insulated, long lasting, easy to maintain and low in price. These These factors should lead the product to a good marketing.