ICE-BREAKER Weekly Refection - Week 3

GO! ICE - BREAKER

Our project status (Steven Kung)

This week, our group spent every day completing paper report for GR1 and making power point for in-class presentation. Since we have received almost 80 correspondents from our survey, the first task for us is to analyze all the data we need and accumulate those numbers into charts to observe the habits and feeling of our correspondents. Our second version questionnaire, which we added to 15 questions to cover every aspects, really provide us a great opportunity to study each elements in GR1. Using the data for age and user experience, we can easily build up a market research and persona/scenario to help us proceed our next step, such as designing characteristics of products. Also, by creating QFD table, we can translate customer requirements into technical description which makes us know, for customers, what the most important characteristic is and which characteristic we can neglect. To complete competition analysis and market value proposition, we search a lot of information for snow/ice removal products on Amazon or eBay. Compared the price and function of existing product with our survey, we can induce a product characteristic table for our design, which explains well about our product value and characteristic. Thanks to GR1, we can know deeper about our design direction and are happy to proceed our next step.

Exciting/interesting finding (Qiongyu Lou)

This week we finished gate review one and first presentation. I feel that we made a great work which makes me feel excited. At first, I think we will have a rough time because we aren’t native speaker and we might not be able to express in right way during paper writing and in-class presenting. However, we did a great job at presentation, and feedbacks from classmates are variety. I feel that our group started to know each better since we share same background and we all have passion to make this project perfectly as teammates.

There is a milestone. I used to form team with American classmate, even sometime we share different thoughts, but I still feel the project can be successful because they have better expression with professor. After this team formation, I feel in different way because we as a team can talk to each other in a more clear way sometime in same native language that really helps the communication within and helps us come up a better idea based on all of our thoughts.  

This time, I feel that the power as a team is really great and it does easy to get used to each others’ work style.

I love our team.

Challenges (Ziwei Xie)

At first, we identified drivers who suffer cold winter to be our user group. At that time, we didn’t think too much about subdividing user group or focus on certain feature to meet certain user group’s meet. We just think removing ice on car in the winter should be a problem and decide to work on it. However, after doing interviews, survey, market research, competition analysis and market value evaluation, we discussed our ideas with Pro. Brei. She gave us a very important suggestion to focus on old people. For old people, on one hand, standing in cold winter wind and snow is easy to cause them sick; on the other hand, their energy limitation contributes their need. Besides, they can afford this kind of products. So we decide to follow Pro. Brei’s suggestion and change our user group into old people aging from 50 – 70. The challenge is that we already conducted our survey, and it was based on our friends aging from 20- 30. We might need to redo a survey to figure out our new user group’s need.

Another challenge might be, in the next step, designing the product. What kind of solution can we provide to user? We have several ideas before, like using an automatically cover, adding deforesting materials to wipers. Next week, we need to focus on solution and feature design. Focusing on reducing time and make the process automatic. 

Future Plan (Chee Wee Lee)

Now that we have just done with Gate Review 1 and presentation, I suppose we should do a reflection session to revise everything that we just did. For example our problem statement, although we had changed it a few times, it should be more specific according to professor, to be able to tackle the problem more effectively. Besides that, we will be having a regular weekly meeting with our coach to discuss what are the problem we are having in our Gate Review 1. On the other hand, this coming week we will be having another meeting with our Professor Brei to talk about the Gate review 1 as well, and also our coming plans. On a side note, maybe we should organize some dinner party to enhance our team bonding and our communication :D