Cooler for beverage and food products
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional coolers provide limited visibility and access to stored products, making it difficult for consumers to identify and retrieve desired items.
Innovation Solution
A cooler design featuring a top door with a curved transparent panel and a vertical door, along with a collapsible shelf that can move between extended and retracted positions, allowing for increased visibility and flexible access to products through multiple access points, enhancing airflow for uniform cooling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a single access portal (door) is used in conventional coolers, then the device complexity is reduced, but the ease of operation and product accessibility deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The cooler is divided into multiple access portals: a top door providing access to an upper product compartment and a vertical door providing access to a lower product compartment. This segmentation allows consumers to access different product regions through different doors, improving ease of operation and product accessibility without requiring the entire cooler to be opened.
2Loss of information
If conventional coolers use opaque doors, then the manufacturing cost is reduced, but the visibility of stored products deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The top door incorporates a curved transparent panel that allows consumers to visually inspect products in the upper product compartment without opening the door. This transparent panel provides product visibility information while maintaining the door's protective function, reducing the need to open the door frequently and improving the consumer experience.
3Ease of operation
If products are stored in deep compartments of conventional coolers, then the storage volume is increased, but the ease of operation and product retrieval deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The cooler is divided into an upper product compartment accessible through the top door and a lower product compartment accessible through the vertical door. This segmentation creates multiple access points to different storage zones, allowing consumers to retrieve products from the front of each compartment without needing to reach into deep, hard-to-access areas. The collapsible shelf further enhances this by allowing access to products previously hidden behind other items.
Solution Approach 2:
The collapsible shelf is designed to collapse forward when the top door is opened, dynamically changing the shelf position to provide access to products that would otherwise be hidden behind other items in the upper product compartment. This dynamic adjustment improves product retrieval ease without reducing the overall storage volume when the shelf is in its normal extended position.
4Ease of operation
If a collapsible shelf is added to improve product accessibility, then the ease of operation improves, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The collapsible shelf is designed to automatically collapse forward when the top door is opened, using the door's movement to trigger the shelf's transformation. This dynamic behavior provides automatic access to previously hidden products without requiring manual intervention or complex control mechanisms. The shelf can be collapsed to access hidden products or extended to maximize storage space, providing adaptability without significant complexity increase.
Data Source
AI summary
Coolers for dispensing products, such as beverages, having multiple doors for accessing a single product compartment. A cooler may include a housing defining a product compartment; a top door coupled to a top surface of the housing at a hinge, the top door comprising a curved transparent panel; a vertical door coupled to a vertical front surface of the housing; a collapsible shelf disposed in the product compartment that is configured to move between an extended position and a retracted position; and a lower shelf disposed below the collapsible shelf in the product compartment. A product disposed on the collapsible shelf may be accessible through the top door when the collapsible shelf is in the extended position and a product disposed on the lower shelf may be accessible through the top door when the collapsible shelf is in the retracted position.