Improved Lid Design Michelle Wiedmann

For this project, I started by making a mood board that reflected how coffee fits into my every day life. I usually drink coffee when working, and started my own bullet journal this past summer, which is reflected in some of my images. I also am usually on the go, reflected in my city images and the mug with a carabiner attached so that it can be hooked onto backpacks. Finally, the rest of my images reflect a lot of my hobbies: music, recording, and theatre. I definitely end up drinking coffee later in the day when I know I will be up late for tech runs.  

Drawing inspiration from the photos I picked out on my mood board, I came up with three possible designs that I could implement for my first project. I sketched up these ideas, in addition to some different handle/more aesthetically pleasing ideas. As someone who carries a water bottle with me in my backpack, I could create some sort of handle that could also be attached to my backpack so I wouldn't have to hold my coffee cup in my hand while traveling. another idea that I had was a handle that had a slot for a spoon/stirrer and sugar packets. I like to put cream and sugar in my coffee, and this would save me some time at the coffee shop or at home and I could put sugar in my coffee at class or at a meeting if I am in a rush. My final idea stemmed from a reusable travel cup that I bought around 2 years ago. I bought this cup at a Broadway show, but unfortunately, the lid is never completely sealed, as there is nothing that can cover the opening for the mouth. I have chosen to pursue this idea, as it would allow me to use a mug that I have already purchased.

At first I intended to modify the cup lid that I already had, with the implementation of a bar that a plugging mechanism could rotate around. Overall, I decided to deviate from this idea, as the center of the original lid did not dip low enough and I thought it would be pretty complicated to implement. I opted for making a new lid, where instead of a rod that could rotate down and plug up the hole for supping, the user could rotate a flat piece of acrylic over the hole. I also chose this because I thought it would require me to only bend one piece of acrylic and I do not have a lot of experience with using heat guns. Some photos of my prototyping process are shown below.  I made the most modifications to the piece that I heat formed from flat to curved, as I didn't want the ends to meet at the end (to allow room for the user's mouth when sipping out of the cup), and also wanted a thinner piece. 

As you can see above, some of my curved pieces actually broke when I tried to bend the top part over, so it would secure the rotating circles that sat inside of the cup. I think that if I could do the project over, I would probably try not to implement that bend over the lip of the original cup to hold the pieces in, and probably just add a circular piece on top of the curved one that would snap together like it does on the bottom. I think that this would result in something a little less clunky for my lid and something more sleek. I also think implementing this lid with red acrylic would really pop in contrast to some of the other colors on the top. Below are some pictures of my final product, which contained 4 distinct parts.