DC 2 -- We won the 2nd Design Challenge competition!

After two weeks working each selected projects, we reach the moment of presentation day. For days, we wonder why there are weird scary masks showing up at study rooms, why guys came in with wet shoes/lower pants(the famous men's bathroom flooding, unfortunately, I am not able to check out:), the deliver table... and a lot of cleaning products(e.g. sponge). We have total 8 teams, working for mexico major companies. Some of business people came all the way from Mexico to hear our presentations.

Which one should I pick, so many great ideas breaking through the existing market, they did not just work on their own, but heavily involved with customers, users and clients, constantly get feedback and upgrade. That is the major gap we learn how to close, not missing any market request/need.

One furniture update team starts their presentation with a fun 3D video to show the crowded cubicle life. After working for 9 years, I totally understand the frustration of sitting in the traditional cubicle settings, which separate each other, less communication and more isolation. The suggestion they have is to well use the angle of combine even number of joint cubes and lower the cubicle wall to maximize the cubes(traditional cubes 40 will be increase to 51-53 cubes in the same space) and maintain individual space. I like the new layout and wonder what new users/employees think about the settings.

The delivery table comes with patient dashboard, like a tablet PC, reflect the time, next contraction, and doctor return time(apparently, everyone wants that), health data, messages, pictures, video, webcam, music, etc. It looks like that you are having a business class for the ride of delivering baby. Since there are several classmates, whose wives are expecting this year. The questions from class are quite fun to listen, esp. looking the chair animation. This chair is really cool, at least is way simple, user-friendly than the one I saw when I visited a girlfriend in hospital during her labor.

Our presentation is Somaki Fregon Sponge redesign and development. The original sponge is not a real sponge as it does not absorb liquid, sort of like scrubber. The food easily stuck on the fiber and not easy to clean. Due to copying, in local Mexico market, there are similar products with very cheap prices, cause Somaki loosing price and brand identify. We did 14 interviews from 4 continents for market research, later we did 2nd survey to get feedback finding out if they are happy with our new designed product. The Fregon Sponge does not absorb the liquid, actually it is a scrubber, so instead of designing a new sponge, we focus to design scrubber. I personally quite happy with the solution, ergonomic handling, suitable for women's hands(somehow, the cleaning jobs are done by women, come on, guys!), able to target low end as well as high end, kit allows various surface cleaning. From financial analysis, we removed the costy 70% foam with the special designed handle support. So, users can replace fiber often and clean the fiber by either microwave or dishwasher. The whole experience allows me to explore the marketing and sales strategy, which I have not spend much time on those field. It really lets me engage with customers and clients. Often engineers receive the business requirements, heavily depends the client company's request, but this experience, we are able to work with client as well as practical users, helping us to see the perspectives from manufacture and buyer point of views. As engineer, we usually underestimate the benefits from marketing and sales strategy in our early design. This is a quite fun learning curve and let me see the importance to engage every side of experts. When you spend much time on product design, one failed function could cause the failure of entire product. Simple design brings function directly to user. This is very basic concept, but when we work on the product design, we overestimate and complicate the whole process.

So many highlights during presentations, also some models refuse to cooperate, like the Halloween LED Masks and body model, not moving as the way it designed.

By using survey feedback rating, the final competition result is: Team 4 won with their world best scrubber design!! I am so proud of my team :) Blade and I did the presentation, but we can not forget the dedicated team members: Vishal, Rafaral, ChangBae, and Jose. They are awesome!! It really pays off all these very late nights, many discussions and update. We even took the highest cost management, customer needs, profitability overall. From the whole class feedback, we are able to see the first impressions from each classmates, every good to know how we can do better.






Oh, we say goodbye wrapping up DC2, and say hello to welcome DC3, which is the last competition in our Jan. IAP. Most of us have already began to plan the mini vacation to get away this weekend, getting some break before next week Spring semester start.