Blog 2
BLOG ENTRY 2
-Week 4 (Scamper and COWS)
After the failed attempt on the cycling vest, my group decided on a coffee maker as we felt that the type of coffee that coffee makers produce are not to our liking. We then felt that we should experiment on the different types of coffee that could be made by a coffee maker.
However after using SCAMPER, we decided to go with one of our ideas in it instead.
Week 4 (Scamper & COWS)
In week 4 we learnt how to generate ideas using SCAMPER.
- Scamper aims to generate a large quantity of ideas
- Some questions that one can ask themselves while doing SCAMPER would be:
How can we do it better?
What else can we do?
S - Substitute
C - Combine
A - Adapt
M - Modify
P - Put to other use
E - Eliminate
R - Reverse
Here are some of the ideas we generated using SCAMPER
Substitute
-Substitute water tank with a tank of milk
Combine
-Put a speaker with the coffee machine to play music
-Combine coffee maker with bed so one can make coffee right when waking up
Adapt
-Use the coffee machine as a thermal flask
-Use the coffee machine as a way to heat up water
Modify
-Make the coffee maker smaller so that it is more portable
Put to other use
-Recycle the used capsules or coffee powder
Eliminate
-Eliminate the use of cable by using rechargeable batteries instead
Reverse
-Drink plain water
After using SCAMPER generating ideas were no longer a hassle as it was easier to think of different types of ideas without wrecking our brains. The different categories really helped my team to brainstorm all types of ideas.
After generating ideas, we needed to screen our ideas to see if they were feasible. We then agreed that there were two major factors to determine if our idea was feasible or not. The two major factors are the budget and the project timeline.
Budget (Overall cost of the project)
-Equipment
-Waste disposal
-Transportation
-Engineering modification
Project timeline
-Delivery of parts
-License application
Besides the two major factors to determine if the idea is feasible, there are also many other factors that needs to be considered (Technical Feasibility & Operational Feasibility)
Technical Feasibility
-Is the project within the limits of the technology we have now?
-Does the lab have the necessary technology we need?
-Does it need a computer software or hardware?
-Does the lab have sufficient space to conduct project?
Operational Feasibility
-Is the manpower enough?
-Is it safe to operate the project?
-Is is legal to operate the project?
Using the idea screening feasibility test, we realized that a lot of our ideas were not feasible at all. The idea screening test gave us a check of reality and prevented us from getting too ambitious with ourselves.
Afterwards, we use COWS to determine which idea was the best among the most feasible ideas.
At first, we had trouble coming up with ideas for the deciding criterias for our ideas as we only used to find criterias for materials. However after much discussion and thinking, we came up with a few criterias we felt were the best in determining the best idea.
C - Criteria
O - Options
W - Weighting
S - Score
Some of the criterias we came up with are
- Environmentally friendly (5%)
-Needs (30%)
-Ease of use (10%)
-Feasibility (35%)
-Cost (20%)
Below is the table that we came up with
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