Group Design Journal for team 7

Team Members:- Vijaya Singh, Meera Pawar, Raj Gubrele, Antony Prakash and Amit Paikrao

Product:- Office Chair with Laptop Holder

Team 7 has 5 members, Two from M.tech and 3 from PhD, 2 from First year and 3 from second year of our programme. This 3D design project is divided into 4 main parts,

1.       Brainstorming,

2.       Ideation,

3.       Decision matrix,

4.       Design Development of 3D printable model.

1. Brainstorming

When we started working on a project we first brainstormed on which product can have different designs suitable as per our needs in our day to day life use. We thought along with these  three points: Reimagine - Redesign- Repurpose of the product. And almost everyone has come with the different products they use in day to day life like WhatsApp, toothbrush, water bottle, E-cycle, power generation in IIT Bombay entrance, Coconut crater, mobile holders, laptop bags, Sitting chair for work from home and pop up tents.

The problem we identified from these products are “Whatsapp-In status, creating groups option should be present”, “Toothbrush-Toothpaste filled toothbrush”, “Waterbottle-Firm grip is needed by using rubber”, “E-cycles- should be solar-powered”, “Power generator- Can we have something which is installed at the gate so when people are walking on that thing gets pressed and power is generated”, “coconut crater-provision in a mixer grinder to crate coconut.”, “laptop bag-dedicated compartments for all things like a mouse, hard drive etc”, “Sitting chair for WFH-To minimize neck problems”, “Popup Tents- not waterproof, less space, hard to put up, condensation”.

Before Starting working on any one product we asked ourselves and among team members the 5 whys to each member about their suggested product. And it resulted into selecting “Office Chair for Work from home purpose”

2. Ideation

In the Ideation phase we used the 5-3-5 method,  Where 5 is number of group members, 3 indicates  Ideas per member and last 5 is time allotted to each member for writing or adding the idea. every team member needs to come up with 3 basic, unique ideas for the product, and when they do it, they shall add on the idea previously generated by other team members i.e iterations of each others ideas. In physical space this task was a bit easy with rotating sheets, but in an online setting we used google spreadsheet to do so.

Initially ideas of one person are refined by another member.  So if we see in the image below ideas are refined in this manner :  Raj > Amit > Antony> Vijaya > Meera > Raj. so each idea is improved by each person in the group directly or indirectly. Initially we brainstormed and came up with 15 unique ideas. As there were 5 people in the team, each member  refined 12 ideas of others, resulting in a total of 15 ideas.

3.Decision Matrix

At the end of the brainstorming and ideation phase, we created around 15 unique ideas. But selecting only one idea out of 15 unique ideas was a tough job, to make this tough job easy Decision Matrix came to aid us.

A decision matrix is a matrix where you write your best ideas in the 1st column and then rank them to a few criteria in rows. Criteria are characteristics that you think are important to consider when building the product. We selected 4 ideas out of 15 that are workable and according to the user's need 

Ideas selected : 

1. Neck rest should be movable right-left, front-back, top-down

2. Provision to place laptop

3. chair with Massager, heating pad for pain relief

4. Adjustable chair height as well as adjustable backrest/ headrest/ armrest heights. 

Criteria on which ideas were rated, 

1. Usability & Ease of use (4)

2. Durability (3)

3. Novelty (5)

4. MVP (2)

5. Safety (5)

6. Comfort (4)

Next to each criteria number is mentioned in brackets, those are weights for that respective criteria. Weight helps us to rank the criteria i.e 5 weight is most important/ much needed and 1 is least needed.

Now we have 4 ideas and 6 criteria and weight to each criterion. We ranked the idea out of 5 (5 being most likely and 1 being least likely), The rank of the idea is multiplied by a weight of criteria to yield the total points. We ranked the idea collaboratively and the Office chair with Laptop holder got maximum points and it made us select it.

4. 3D Modeling with Tinkercad

Tinkercad is a free online software that lets you draw/create a 3D image that can be directly printed on a 3D printer. It provides the Top-Front-Back-Left-Right-Down view, which makes it easy to see the product while creating.

We have gone through the demo of How to place the shapes, align them, how to adjust the size of the shape. When we started creating our model, we mostly used Box shapes and cylinder shapes. Parts of the chair i.e. backrest, Seat, and Leg support are made through a box and Hinges, hand rest, the structure of the laptop holder was designed by the cylinder. 

First we drag the box shape and resize it as per our need that will be fit as a seat, the edges of the box were made blunt so that it won’t hurt the user. Later on, this seat is duplicated to make backrest and leg support from it. 3 shapes are then connected by creating the hinge by using a cylinder and reshaping it. 

For the laptop Holder the base and structure was again created by box shape. The arrangement of the laptop holder base was made such that when not in use it will be rolled to the backside of the chair and when in use it will be rolled in front through roller arrangement. This arrangement was made by placing the cylinder as a hinge. Chair has a button on the arm rest to adjust the angle of inclination for back support and leg support.

Base of the chair was made rigid to balance the chair if a person is rolled back on the chair. Final printing of this will be made in parts as the dimensions of the chair are bigger than the 3D printer’s printable area. 

Main takeaways:-

1. Brainstorming and Ideation phases helped us to think out of the box and generate weird, fancy, workable ideas.

2. The collaboration helped to select the product to work on by differentiating Needs and Wants.

3. Individually each member created 3 ideas, but in collaboration, it was raised to 15. The collaboration helped in growing ideas. 

4. Ideation helps to understand and accept another person’s view.

5. Decision matrix are unbiased and it's The easiest way to logically find the best idea for product

6. It depends upon the technical and scientific criteria and not some random fancy wants.

7. It helps to decide what we are looking for in the final design.

8. Tinkering refined our view, it made us believe in our product. “When we see it, you will believe it”

9. Tinkering made us enhance our ideas

Challenges:- 

1. Brainstorming is a time-consuming process, so limited 5-10 minutes put more pressure and it’s hard to converge on one idea for a product.

2. Fixing criteria for the product is hard and takes time. One needs to understand what we are looking for in a product.

3. Sometimes scores get tied, we need to rework on scores and follow the natural instincts.

4. In tinkering, It was hard to follow the 3D plane and placing the object and moving them in the plane was challenging. Once you understand the 3D space it becomes quite easy to choose to place and use the shapes.