The Birdhouse (aka our Sharps Container)

We had a great time making our sharps container! We drew up some initial sketches of types of containers (some more complicated than the others) but we finally decided we wanted to make it as simple as possible. The qualities most important to us were: simplicity of design and use, ease of user-understanding, effectiveness at containing the sharps and keeping people safe from the sharps deposited, and cheapness (ability to make something using classroom materials).

We also wanted it to be big enough that it was noticeable but small enough that it could be easily transported around a classroom. Above is our first design! It was a 6 in x 3 in x 1 in rectangular box made of cardboard, with a 1 in slot for depositing sharps. Below is the protoype we built using this design.

 

Tis a gift to be simple! We just used leftover cardboard and ductape with this initial design.

 

Happy with the first prototype we wanted to continue with a similar design, but we found nicer white cardboard and decided we should have it standing tall so that it would be more noticeable. We considered the fact that sharp objects can come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and thought that having an opening flap might allow for more flexibility of use (i.e. big sharp objects could be dropped in) and so we changed our design slightly to what is shown below. Because we had a new aspect to the design (a flap that opens and closes) we wanted to ensure that it could be secured closed, and so we added the little green string and the cardboard circular peg. Hot glue became our best friend during this project!

Front view of our sharps container . . . "The Birdhouse" :) (We hadn't yet added the pink post-it note warnings)

We tested this design with paper clips, hypothesizing that paper clips were probably as thin as (or thinner than) a sharp object could be, and so we tried shaking the container up and down with paper clips inside to see if they flew out. They did! They slipped through the slats on the side of the top where the flap was, so we added bubble wrap on the edges of the top to keep everything enclosed. This worked well, and we were happy with our final product! The finishing touch was to add hot pink post-it notes so that we could warn people about the use of the container––although I think (after having gotten feedback from the class) we would have drawn pictures instead of writing words, so that it could be (nearly) universally understood.

Above is an aerial view of our final, final product! We had a lot of fun designing this, and feel pretty good about its potential for use in the classroom.