College - Author 1
College of Engineering
Department - Author 1
Computer Science Department
Degree Name - Author 1
BS in Computer Science
Date
6-2026
Primary Advisor
April Grow, College of Engineering, Computer Science and Software Engineering Department
Abstract/Summary
Menstrual products are a basic need, yet the machines that dispense them in public restrooms have barely changed in seventy years. Most are coin operated, and many are jammed or empty. One study found that 14.2% of college women in the United States had experienced period poverty in the past year [1]. California now mandates free products in public schools and colleges [2]. EasyAccess began as a venture concept in my Intro to Entrepreneurship course at Cal Poly, where we surveyed 81 people about this problem. When caught without a product, 37.2% of respondents told us they resort to toilet paper, and another 26.9% asked a stranger nearby for a product. Almost no one uses the coin dispensers. As one respondent put it, no one carries around coins anymore. About 54% had missed school, work, or an event because of period related circumstances. Existing software does not really address this either. Delivery platforms such as Instacart [3] and DoorDash [4], trackers such as Flo [5] and Clue [6], and pharmacy apps such as the CVS app [7] all miss the moment when someone needs a product right now, or a guarantee of finding what they need close by.
The question this project tries to answer is whether the antiquated dispenser system for menstrual products can be modernized with smart vending technology and modern forms of payment. EasyAccess is my attempt at an answer: a mobile app for iOS and Android backed by a transactional server, where a user finds a nearby dispenser on a map, pays in the app, and collects the products from the machine. Most of the difficulty is trust. An unattended machine holds only a few units, so the system must never sell a unit it does not have, and it must never keep money for a product it never delivered. If an order is not collected within one hour, the system refunds it automatically and restocks the units. The system works end to end against Stripe’s test network today. We validated it with the survey, with scripted end to end payment and refund scenarios, and with more than 100 automated integration tests.
URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cscsp/186