SINGLE PILL DISPENSER
3RD PLACE CATEGORY WINNING DESIGN
DESIGNED FOR THE SPRING 2021 DESIGN COMPETITION HOSTED BY AUTODESK AND DELVE, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE COLLEGE OF SAN MATEO, LANEY COLLEGE, LOS ANGELES PIERCE COLLEGE, AND SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
WITH CSM TEAMMATES MILES ROGERS AND SAL ARGUETA
DESIGN CHALLENGE
With standard prescription bottles, it is often difficult to dispense one pill at a time due to several factors including the size of the pill bottle opening, which is usually not wide enough to fit your fingers or hand comfortably, and the size of the pills—with smaller pills, it gets increasingly difficult to get the correct dosage. For people with various medical conditions that affect fine motor skills, it is especially difficult to dispense the correct amount of pills.
DESIGN PROCESS
INSPIRATION
We explored and researched various existing products and concept designs and utilized these to create a singular design.
CHALLENGES
Designing a mechanism that minimizes the need for fine motor skills and maximizing compatibility with different pill bottle sizes and pill variations.
PROCESS
Explored and researched different mechanisms for dispensing, listed their pros and cons, extracted the best ideas and learnings from each design and incorporated them into our prototypes.
Researched several sorting mechanisms and machines (from manufacturing to candy dispensers and coin sorters) to see how objects of different sizes can be uniformly sorted. Then developed an optimal funnel shape to help ensure pills were oriented uniformly before dispensing.
PROTOTYPING
We created a working prototype with the help of a friend to test an early version of the design.
Figure 1. How the pill dispenser fits on a standard Rx bottle.
Figure 2. Orientation and position of an average-sized capsule before dispensing.
Figure 3. The dispensing motion and how a single pill can be dispensed with one hand and several pills in the bottle.
PROJECT DESIGN
INNER CAP (transparent PET)
OUTER CAP (transparent PET)
ROTATING SIZE ADJUSTMENT (PET)
OUTER CAP LOCK (transparent PET)
PILL ORIENTATION — The inner cap was designed with a funnel shape to first orient the pills vertically and then horizontally to ensure the pills dispense uniformly
ASSEMBLY AND MECHANISM —Thread onto a standard Rx bottle, invert the cap and pill bottle, then depress the outer cap to dispense a pill. A cap lock restricts the vertical motion of outer cap while a limiting wall in the interior restricts additional pills from being dispensed.
ROTATING OUTER RING — The ring attached to the orange cap rotates freely, while a magnetic locking system ensures the holes lines up perfectly. The ring features two hole sizes to accommodate differently sized pills.