Reflection

Our goal was to create the minimum viable version of an ambient coffee cup. With simple LEDs, you would know exactly when you have reached your allotment for the week. In retrospect, there are two areas that we would like to improve for a version 2.0 ambient coffee cup. First, it would be better if the tally of coffees would roll over each week so that if a certain week you drank zero coffees, you could save your two for the next week. We see this as an easy upgrade for the next version of the product. Secondly, having an LED on all the time may get annoying, and everyone at the office will know you drank your quota. We explored other ambient methods of communication such as hidden LEDs. Perhaps the ultimate way to limit your coffee consumption would be with a cup that adjusted itself based on the dollar amount you could afford. One of our first ideas was a cup that would not let you have more than you were allowed each week by volumetrically limiting itself. This opened up more ideas such as perhaps Starbucks could sell coffee by the ounce to these people who were trying to be frugal, while still keeping them hooked on caffeine. The volumetric limitation could on the bottom of the cup and by screwing up and down with a rubber gasket, the cup could change size. You could limit your coffee and all of your friends would never know the difference.