Blog 2

 Hello everyone! 😁 Welcome to my second blog. In this blog entry, I will be covering what I have learned in week 4 of our tutorial lessons. Read on to find out more!

            

                                                                       Scamper

In this lesson, we focused on the ideation and selection of our chosen chemical device. We made use of  SCAMPER to improve and make adjustments to our product. My first impression of the acronym "SCAMPER" was literally the definition of scurrying away in a swift manner. However, that was not it😂. Do you know what SCAMPER stands for?

SCAMPER is actually an acronym formed from the abbreviation of Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse!

We were told to use the SCAMPER template on our product, and brainstorm any ideas on how to modify it. At each stage of the SCAMPER checklist, there were guiding questions to help us make changes to our product. 

Brainstorming: 

Substitute: The first step was to substitute part of our device for something else. My team thought of manually squeezing the hair product and using the brush to spread it out, rather than using an electric-powered brush. This is because there may be a possibility of the user having an electric shock should the electric hair brush come into contact with water. 

Combine: We decided to combine the brush and the comb feature by having them on each side of the device. This will make it more user-friendly as the user can use the device for various purposes, whether it's to comb their hair after showering or brushing it in the morning.

Adapt: In order to cater to different users' needs, we plan to include detachable components in the device. These detachable components can include different types of combs and brushes that can be used for different purposes. 

Modify: As the main purpose of our device would be to use it in the shower, we settled on installing a "grip" on the handle of the brush. This will make the device less slippery when the water comes into contact with it. It will also make the user's experience more convenient and comfortable.

Put to another use: One idea that came to our mind was using the brush feature to clean different parts of the house, like the kitchen! 😂 Since the device would come with detachable components, we thought of including a different kind of brush in the device: 

Eliminate: We thought of eliminating the handle of the device. This would mean that the bottle (where the hair product is stored) would become the new "handle", where the user could just squeeze the bottle to dispense the hair product onto their hair. They would then use the brush/comb to spread it evenly. 

I felt that using SCAMPER was a great tool in helping me to stimulate my thinking and enable me to come up with many different ideas on how we could tweak our device without relying on Google most of the time. This allowed me to realize that I had the ability to be creative, but I just needed a little push to kick start the engine in my head! 😖

                                                                              COWS

In the next part of the tutorial, we were asked to make use of the COWS decision matrix to see which of our ideas from the SCAMPER above would be most suited for our product. 

Even though I had made use of the COWS matrix numerous times during the course of my study, I still found it challenging to complete it as I felt that some of our ideas were almost the same. My team and I had to go through the ideas again and select them carefully before putting them in the matrix to ensure that they would not sound repeated. 

We also had a hard time choosing the criteria for our device as we realized that some of the criteria were either repeated, or it fell under the same category.  

Choosing the appropriate weightage for the criteria was challenging as all of us had different priorities when choosing the product. For example, Isabelle felt that the availability of parts of our device was more important, while Hariz felt that the ease of maintenance should be the main focus. Meanwhile, I thought that the ease of use of the device should be the priority. 

Fortunately, we were able to come up with 4 criteria that we found suitable for our device: 

And here is our final COWS matrix! 😀

Although my group and I encountered a few road stops along the way, I'm glad that we were able to get past them and resolve any issues that we had. I believed that it also strengthened the bond between our group as we were able to better communicate with each other to reach a solid conclusion. Despite having to push myself (and my brain) to generate creative ideas, I am pleased to have been given this opportunity to put myself to the test! I hope that from here on, I will be able to develop a more positive approach to formulating new designs and ideas 😝

That's all for my second blog:) I hope you all had a good time reading it, and see you in the next blog!👻