W H A T ' S Y O U R C U P O F T E A ?
PROJECT 1
As an architecture major, I end up doing a lot of my work in my architecture studio. So I like to work somewhere else off campus when I’m not working on my studio course. I don't have a daily routine of drinking coffee or tea, but I go to Starbucks a lot with a friend to study and work on other assignments. One day, I went to Starbucks to work and meet up with my friend, but there were no seats so we needed to relocate. I bought two cups of coffee and went on my way to another location where my friend found a new study space. During this time, I had to carry two cups as well as look at my phone for directions. Because it wasn’t easy to look at my phone while carrying the cups one in each hand, I was hugging one of the cups, constantly worried that it might spill all over my clothes. To accommodate this specific situation, I created a cup holder designed for my own need. This two-cup holder allows carrying the cups safely and easily whenever I am holding or carrying more than two things.
FINAL PRODUCT
MOOD BOARD
This is the first sketch I did of different alternatives of cup holders thinking of possible types or looks. I wanted to use slot joints to assemble the pieces together so I preferred more simplistic aesthetic.
So I chose one of the ideas and made the first iteration. Through iteration 1, I realized the piece holding the cups need to be placed lower along the handle of the holder, and/or enlarge the holes in which the cups are placed.
Then I made a few more sketches of iterations I could prototype and test out to see which iteration works the best functionally and aesthetically. From the beginning when I chose this type of cup holder, I decided that having two handles placed close together will make it more stable, rather than having one. I made the handle shorter for one iteration, longer for another iteration with uneven top and bottom shape, and a mix of these two design ideas for the last iteration. In iterations 2,3, and 4, I also explore having two layers of the horizontal piece holding the cup and see what that adds to the function and design.
iteration 2
iteration 3
iteration 4
After trying out iterations 2,3, and 4, I decided that iteration 4 served its purpose the best. Because it was a mix of two iterations consisting of a longer handle and wider part on the bottom, it seemed more fit and useful. While exploring having one or two handles and one or two layers of horizontal piece holding the cups, I came to the decision that two handles will make the cup holder more stable and two layers of horizontal piece would be heavy for the sole purpose of carrying cups.