Example Reflection

Challenge

I’m currently studying my last year of Industrial Engineering and in this semester, I had to develop a  product that was innovative in the market. We needed to create a product that had an impact in  the environment as well as be able to contribute in the society in the technical, economical, legal,  financial and sustainable aspects.

We were 5 students (all industrial engineering’s) that needed to develop this idea. In order to  achieve this, we got together to do brainstorming. We had a month to create a product that was  already in the market with an innovation or create something that was new from scratch. At the end  my team and I needed to present the project feasibility with a prototype and had approximately 4  months to develop the idea and do all the testing and prototypes with no money and just 5 regular  students that their major was not focused on designing products.

Selection

We used 2 tools for this project.

First , we used the visualization tool after deciding what was the thing that we wanted to innovate.  We didn’t know at the begging what was the new thing that we wanted to ad or the thing that we  wanted to improve so after hearing all our ideas we decided to create a can that had upper and  lower rigs with assembly thread so there was not necessary the use of the six pack plastic.

The second one was the Launching experience. We knew what we wanted to do but it was just an  idea so we needed to know if it was going to work in a long term and if the customers would use it  with no complains. As in the video of What comes next? Says, we needed to figure key assumptions  and design a test for this ones to confirm the data or just quit our idea.

Application

After doing a lot of brainstorming, we created a design in the computer using solid works in order  to know all the measurements that we needed to start the prototype. With this we were able to  develop the best idea and verify that everything was as we imagined it and that it worked in the  correct way.

Then we figure out some assumptions about the customer, some of them that they will be happy to  help the environment, they will carry out the cans easier among others.  But for this we talk to a  group of people that bought between 5-10 cans (soda, beer or anything related) in a week. We  discovered relevant data such as that sometimes the plastic breaks easily and for little kids is  dangerous, as well as it contaminates the environment. After talking to this group, we made a cheap  prototype.

We invite our friends to a party, and we told them to carry out 6 cans, with our prototype they just  needed to screw the cans in a row and took them to wherever they wanted to. They were amazed  by this new improvement and they were having a good time. The trash decreased slightly and there  were no six-pack plastic that could damage animals.

Insight

We discovered that most of the people do not know the impact that this six-pack plastics have in  the environment and that this could be very dangerous for many animals. In addition, people had  and amazing time with this row of cans and were able to play a simulation of swords, feeling like  they were kids again.

As the creators, we realized all the work done behind a product. We never knew how hard is to  create a new product or to make an improvement in an existing one. Our field is more focused on  making more with less with great quality so we were very happy with the results and with the idea  that we did an amazing job and that if there’s something that you want to do, you can do it  working hard.

Approach

A tool that would helped with our investigation could be the journey map because with this we  would know more detailed the experience that the customer had.

In addition, I think that we need to do more insights and further investigate everything the customer  feels and experiences as this was just a small test. This was just the development of and idea but if  we were going to launch it I think we need to be very detailed and research more.

