Design Name: Better Bottle
Design Description: A water bottle/travel mug
Design Purpose: When you look at any water bottle or coffee mug out there, you can instantly observe multiple flaws that they share. The first is that almost all of them are ugly, the designers who designed them didn’t put any care into the details of a product that is going to almost everyday. Secondly, they all have a specialized function, they are designed as either water bottles or travel coffee mugs, but none do both. Third, they all have flaws with their mechanisms. There is no way to tell whether you have fully screwed the top on and gotten a good seal, which leads to you spilling your drink all over the place and often all over yourself. I designed the Better Bottle to combat these flaws with other bottles, and make a well designed, all purpose, spill proof bottle.
Thought Process: I really wanted the Better Bottle to look unlike any other water bottle on the market, while still clearly conveying what it is. I started with a simple outline of a basic travel mug, and made slight alterations from there, so that the final product is a simple as possible, while still being recognizable. I wanted there to be a seamless transition between the main body of the bottle and the lid, making the bottle look as if it is one piece fused together. I made the opening a circle, as to fit the overall design language of the bottle. I wanted to make the lid itself pretty small in relation to the rest of the bottle, both so that the bottle could hold more, and because of the way that it makes the lid feel like a dial or manipulatable object.
Product Specifications: The Better Bottle has two different openings, if you turn the bottles lid once, you will find the standard opening, a full circle ideal for drinking water and other cold beverages, and if you turn it again, you will find an opening in the shape of a semi-circle, ideal for drinking hot beverages like coffee or tea. These two openings allow the Better Bottle to function as both a bottle and a travel mug, depending on your preference, eliminating the need to buy two different products. The Better Bottle improves on faulty bottle designs by stopping the user from opening the bottle with an open lid and stopping them from drinking without a complete seal between the lid and the bottle. To do this, we devised and implemented a innovative new locking technique where the lid is separated into two parts, the first being a smaller portion that connects with the bottle, and the second being a larger, hollow portion that fits over and rotates around the smaller portion. In order to rotate the upper portion and line up the holes on the two parts, the lid must be completely screwed in so that the right amount of force is being applied on both the larger and smaller portions. Furthermore magnet located near the closed, bottle opening, and mug opening sections correspond with magnets located in the larger section of the lid, and when two magnets line up, a small bit of feedback can be felt, so you know exactly when you’ve locked the lid open or closed. To stop liquid from spilling when drinking, the bottle uses an innovative new technique where the threads for screwing on the lid on the bottle are on the inside of the bottle and those on the lid are on the outside, instead of the other way around, so any excess liquid just goes back into the main body of the bottle instead of the other way around. The outside of the bottle is made out of polished aluminum so that the bottle doesn’t get to warm or too cold, and the inside of the bottle is coated in aluminum oxide, to maintain the temperature of the liquid inside.
