Week 15

Prototyping 🔨

This week is one of the last few lessons we have before the semester ends. It felt relatively short despite it being the usual 3 hours long of the lesson as there was not much that we went through.

What did we learn then if you might ask? Well, we learned about prototyping.

What is Prototyping? 🤔

It simply means a simple experimental model of the proposed product to help check if it is what the user wants through the feedback that is given to help better develop the product.

Why Prototype? 🤔

The reason why prototyping is essential in any product design is due to the reason that it helps improves the product and ensure that the ideation is feasible. It also allows for early changes which will prevent later complications when the product is almost done. It also allows stakeholders to know what the product does and the potential it has. Users might use the product in unexpected ways therefore the prototype can allow the makers to understand how users may use the product the way that they did not think of. It provides a sense of ownership and finally improves time-to-market by minimizing errors before product release.

Prototype For the Self-cooling Water bottle

Now that we have learnt what prototyping is and how it is useful, we have to make our own prototype with our product which is the self-cooling water bottle. We have a time frame of roughly a week and a half to finish the prototype and present it to the class. We will be using cardboard to prototype as it is a low-fidelity prototype that is fast and cheap to make.

Activity 📝

After all of those were explained and briefed to us, we were given activity which was to research the principles and the mechanism of our chemical device. We also needed to draw up a sketch of the chemical product device and its specifications. This activity occupied the majority of the lesson as there were quite a few things to research. We originally struggled with the operating principle of our chemical product device however we eventually managed to find out what it was.

The Video

After Dr. Noel finished checking the majority of the group's he showed us a video on how Google glass was prototyped. We have learnt 3 main points from this video which are:

1. Find the quickest path to experience 

2. Doing is the best kind of thinking

3. Use material that is easily accessible to maximize the speed of learning

After watching the video, Dr Noel gave a short debrief about the video and finally ended class.

Reflection 📜

Trisyia 🐌

This week's lesson was okay. We didn't do much as it is one of our last lessons. We learned about prototyping and had a briefing for our presentation. It was a fun and useful lesson. The activity was definitely challenging as we kept on getting it wrong. However, in the end, we finally thought of the answer. Overall the lesson was challenging but okay.

Jun Ying 🚲

Even though we did not go through much content, this week's lesson felt like one of the most important. First, we learnt about prototyping, which we will use to present our product to the class in the upcoming weeks. I feel quite nervous as I do not know how our prototype will turn out, but I have confidence that my groupmates and I can pull through and make a great prototype. Next, we had to research the operating principles of our product. After a while, we found out that we were using the Peltier effect to produce cold air. At first, I was confused about what the Peltier effect was, but after further research, I got a sense of what it was about. I hope I take away the concepts learnt in this lesson and apply them to my prototype.

John 👽

This week is one of our last few lessons and therefore there was not really much that was thought but nonetheless, it was still a good one as we had learned about prototyping. With the knowledge of what prototyping is, my team and I were able to come out with a prototype for our product. It was fun trying to come up with the prototype as it challenged our creativity on how to use cardboard to make the prototype. We also learnt about the operating principle of our product as we originally had a misconception of it from the beginning therefore it really intrigued me as I learnt about the Peltier effect. This was something that I had not known before up till now and it is a really interesting operating principle. I hope that we can apply what we have learned in this lesson for our prototype and presentation that is going to happen in our last lesson for the module.

Jessica 🐰

In this week lesson, we learned about prototyping. This was new to me because I had never made any prototype before. After Dr. Noel explained to us what prototype was, he want us to come out with a prototype. It's a challenging thing to do. At first we thought it was easy, but the reality was that it was a bit difficult. But through our efforts, we have some ideas for our prototype.

Kevan 🐺

This week was a blast, we did all we can to finish up the prototype. We had a lot of difficulties understanding which part fits and which part doesn't fit but overall we finally understood the importance of prototyping. We were at first doubtful about prototyping as we thought we can actually finish the water bottle in one go. But, after prototyping we realize the difficulty of assuming dimensions, and we understand why it is important to understand the dimensions before working on the object. Overall, I had an enjoyable time in this module, thank you Dr Noel =]