IH01-RickySurachman

From IEOR 170 Spring 2007

Good design: Blinds of the Etcheverry Hall

The design of the blinds is very intuitive. People can see and know instantly that they just have to move the bar in the middle of the blinds in order to open or close the blinds.

Bad Design: Ramune Bottle

Ramune is a soda drink that offers unique design to its customer. One of the most unique parts of the bottle design is that instead of using cap like other bottle, Ramune bottle use marble as its cap (img 1). So, this means that the customers have to release the marble before the can drink from the bottle.

Img 1. Ramune use marble as the bottle cap

Img 2. After the marble is released

The reason why this is a bad design is because after the marble is released, when the customers drink from the bottle, the marble can easily return to the cap and block the bottle opening and prevent the customer drink from the bottle. So, because of the marble, the customer can not drink the whole bottle in one time.

Img 3. Marble is blocking the bottle's entrance

So, in order to keep both customer’s satisfaction and bottle’s unique design, I propose to use a small rubber that is placed inside the bottle’s entrance. This rubber will hold the marble until the customers open the drink (img 4). This rubber will also have two holes that give the soda path to the entrance so the customer can drink without any difficulty (also img 4). At the same time, since the rubber will shrink after the marble is released and it will prevent the marble to block the bottle’s entrance (img 5).

Img 4. before the bottle is opened Img 5. after the marble is released