The Jugs Cart
January 22, 2008
No, it’s not a bra. Although I probably wouldn’t object to research in that area if I was called upon to do so. There’s a football throwing mechanism called the JUGS Machine, you can blame them for the name. All I had to do was design a cart that held the thing. My research showed competitors’ carts as cheesy, ugly, square meshed framed contraptions that most junkyard dogs could build in their garage.
All it takes is a little time spent putting yourself in the shoes of the user and you’ll be on your way to a better product. I’m surprised so many companies don’t understand that. What did I find? Well, you need a place to hold footballs, and a place to sit a generator to run the machine if your field isn’t powered. So that dictates 2 fairly large spaces on the cart. But if you just make it a big rectangle, like everyone else does, it forces the operator of the machine to either stand on the edge of the cart, off balance, while trying to load and fire footballs, or to stand on the ground leaning in to reach the machine, and bashing their shins on the cart when getting carried away with aiming the machine. Why not bring the structure of the cart in narrow where the user is, so he can stand on solid ground, and load, aim and fire with complete control?
By the way, it looks better too.
