The French Press Travel Mug is....
A travel mug that brews your coffee or tea on the go! It uses vacuum-sealing technology to keep your beverage warm for up to four hours. You can steep your beverage as long as you desire, and when it gets to the proper strength, just press down the plunger and voila! A perfect cup of coffee, just how you like it.
According to research done by the National Coffee Association, 56% of adults living in the United States drank coffee every day in 2006
In other words, the market for coffee drinkers is HUGE!!!
(not to mention those tea drinkers)
Problem
Existing french presses use a press to keep the coffee grounds/tea leaves submerged in water, so over time the coffee/tea becomes bitter. Bitter coffee makes people angry.
Our design can prevent this!!
Solution
Our ingenious French Press Travel Mug contains a magnet that attracts to the plunger in the mug, so when your coffee is to your liking, you simply press down the plunger - the magnet creates a water-tight seal on the plunger, cutting off the grounds from the water so you don't have to worry about them again (until you clean it, of course, which is also made simple with our design).
The French Press Travel Mug went through many stages before it reached the final product. To determine what we needed out of our product, so to say, our functional requirements. We decided they would be as follows:
Next, there were the critical function models, which had the sole purpose of meeting our function requirements. From these, we determined which we would model our final product on.
Design I
Design II
Our final prototype was based off of Design II. The plunger assembly of the final prototype can be seen below:
A travel mug that brews your coffee or tea on the go! It uses vacuum-sealing technology to keep your beverage warm for up to four hours. You can steep your beverage as long as you desire, and when it gets to the proper strength, just press down the plunger and voila! A perfect cup of coffee, just how you like it.
According to research done by the National Coffee Association, 56% of adults living in the United States drank coffee every day in 2006
- This is 112 million coffee drinkers!
- Coffee: 23.3 gallons per person
- Tea: 9 gallons per person
In other words, the market for coffee drinkers is HUGE!!!
(not to mention those tea drinkers)
Problem
Existing french presses use a press to keep the coffee grounds/tea leaves submerged in water, so over time the coffee/tea becomes bitter. Bitter coffee makes people angry.
Our design can prevent this!!
Solution
Our ingenious French Press Travel Mug contains a magnet that attracts to the plunger in the mug, so when your coffee is to your liking, you simply press down the plunger - the magnet creates a water-tight seal on the plunger, cutting off the grounds from the water so you don't have to worry about them again (until you clean it, of course, which is also made simple with our design).
The French Press Travel Mug went through many stages before it reached the final product. To determine what we needed out of our product, so to say, our functional requirements. We decided they would be as follows:
- Remove the majority of the coffee grounds/tea leaves from the liquid
- Keep temperature of the liquid above 140 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 4 hours or below 40 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 2 hours
- Simple and easy to clean
Next, there were the critical function models, which had the sole purpose of meeting our function requirements. From these, we determined which we would model our final product on.
Design I
Design II
Our final prototype was based off of Design II. The plunger assembly of the final prototype can be seen below: