Dog Treat Dispenser
What?
Our client, a spinal cord injury survivor, has limited mobility and uses a motorized wheelchair. He enjoys outdoor activities with his service dog, Oliver, but has difficulty managing and dispensing dog treats independently. Current treat storage methods are inconvenient and prone to spills. There is a need for a portable, wheelchair-compatible device that allows him to easily store, carry, and dispense dog treats in a controlled, accessible way.
How?
We ended up creating a device that dispensed one treat per click, which could mount to our client’s wheelchair. Browse through the photos and videos to the right to see how our design evolved over three iterations.
What did I learn?
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This design incorporated press, sliding, and tight fits, improving my knowledge of tolerances.
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We articulated clear user needs and determined engineering requirements around them. This process was new and helped steer our decision-making process.
Low-Fidelity Protoype
1
Medium Fidelity Prototype
Our medium fidelity prototype was a sturdier and stronger version of our first, using 3D printed materials rather than cardboard and paper. It also featured a basket to collect treats and a metal thingy that let us mount it to the wheel chair.
2
Final Product
The biggest issue we ran into was jamming: treats would get stuck in our funnel and not fall through. Our third prototype sought to tackle this issue by incorporating a mechanism that strikes the funnel with each press, jostling the treats, de-jamming them.
