Team Members: Megan Pendleton, Brandon Taylor, Oliver Wang, and Guang Zhu
This is a project that I worked on in Spring 2013 while taking the course ME 290H: Sustainable Product Design.
Mission statement: To provide a more sustainable alternative to single-use plastic cups used at social events. Our product aims to reduce the number of cups by providing a unique and novel design that encourages social interaction.
The Problem: The single-use, red, SOLO, cup used for drinking at most social functions is made of #6 Polystyrene plastic, which is not generally recyclable. The cups are used in high volume and generate lots of waste.
Initial needs hierarchy
The final concept is the MatchUp Cup. The MatchUp Cup focuses on facilitating social interactions while reducing the number of cups used per person during an event. Our design accomplishes this by encouraging users to identify with their cup. Therefore, users are more likely to hang on to one particular cup during a party, thereby reducing the number of cups used.
When conducting user research, we learned that approximately 40% of people attending a party use three or more cups. In our interviews, we often heard people comment that during a party they set their cup down but later have no idea which one is theirs so they go and grab a new one. One current approach to this problem is to provide pens or name tags for people to fill out. This does address the problem but people might not bother to go to the trouble of writing their names.
Our design incentivizes people to customize it. The goal with these cups is that they can be used to encourage social interaction at a party. We have one main design, the “Never Have I Ever” cup and also two sister products. Considering the “Never Have I Ever” cup, the way that it works is that when someone first joins a party and is given a cup, he/she completes the phrase in the space provided. This could be something like “Never Have I Ever....Been to Vegas.” As the person walks around the room, it’s easy to strike up conversations with others given how they have completed the phrase. The way that the game is played is that if you meet someone else and you have done what they have written in the “Never Have I Ever...” then you have to take a drink. Each person will no doubt have very unique ways of completing this phrase. People will want to hang on to these cups as a conversation piece and if they do set it down then it will be easier to recognize than current, conventional cups used at parties.
