Tilting water cup concept gets you to drink more water by scaring you

We all know how important water is to our health, but simply knowing those facts doesn’t immediately translate to action. Most of us simply forgo drinking water until we feel thirsty or when it’s time to eat, even though we actually need to hydrate regularly throughout the day. It’s easy to forget to do that in during the busy day, and it’s also just as easy to snooze or skip alarms you set to remind you. You wouldn’t be so complacent, however, if your water cup or tumbler is fated to fall over unless you drink water at the right time, and that’s somewhat the kind of scare tactic that this concept device employs to try to get you to drink water more regularly.

Designers: Yuxiong Dong, Yaoxin Cai, Yongde Zhu, Kang Han

No, the cup thankfully doesn’t actually threaten to spill your water if you don’t rush to catch it, but it makes you think the tumbler will indeed tumble over if you don’t. It only tries to make you stand up and make the effort to walk to the device, presuming you put it far from your desk. The way this tilting water cup works is a mixture of simple mechanics and psychology, though some will probably have doubts about the efficacy of the latter.

The design is made up of two parts, the actual cup that holds the water and the base that does the mind trick. You simply put the cup of water on top of the base, turn the ring on the base to set the timer, and then go back to what you were doing. Once the timer runs out, an alarm presumably sounds and the surface of the base where the cup rests begins to tilt, forcing you to rush to its side and pick up the cup. And since you’re already there anyway, you might as well drink the water from it, which is the whole point of this rather odd system.

Of course, the cup won’t actually fall off since it’s magnetically attached to that base. The question is whether the contents will start spilling at that angle, so you might have to make sure not to fill it up in the first place. You might also wonder if it will be difficult to pick up the cup from the base considering it has to be held by strong magnets to prevent it from slipping when it tilts.

The biggest concern, however, will be whether the strategy actually works. It might be effective for the first few times, but once your mind has adjusted to it, it won’t be so easily tricked again. At that point, you might very well start ignoring it, too, just like those alarms and reminders, turning the titling water cup into an odd but pointless design.