Oops, sorry for this utterly late post!!!! Domain 4 was too brief a domain that I totally forgotten we had been through this domain.. or was it because of dissociative amnesia? I felt that I had ASD after a mental breakdown that week.. stress...@@ Anyway, after regaining my strength by resetting my prioeities, I'm now on full force striving my best to end this semester with no regrets.There's not much time left, two weeks will pass like a split second. =)
Lesson 4: The Art of Letting Go
“Quitting is not giving up, it's choosing to focus your attention on something more important. Quitting is not losing confidence, it's realizing that there are more valuable ways you can spend your time. Quitting is not making excuses, it's learning to be more productive, efficient and effective instead. Quitting is letting go of things (or people) that are sucking the life out of you so you can do more things that will bring you strength.”
Remember how we previously came out with 10 concepts? We had to filter it down to five after gaining feedback from the others. We strike off certain ideas that were not generally liked or those which are impossible to carry out due to technical reasons. We also refined the ideas, combining some ideas into one, and finally came out with the following 5 refined alpha-concepts.
After that, we had to conduct feasibility studies on these 5 concepts. Why? to know that if the idea is attainable, and to foresee the challenges we might face and come out with a contingency plan. It is better that we give up certain ideas at this early stage of product development when we know that certain things wouldn't work, imagine all the money that has gone into waste!
So, to prevent this kind of things from happening, we conducted a quick feasibility test. What we did was we laid out the ingredients needed for each concepts, troubleshoot for any upcoming challenge, and come out with a solution. At the same time, we coded those items into 1,0, and -1 to represent viability (1=viable, 0=uncertain, -1=non-viable). We did the same for the processing of the product as well. Finally, we look into the financial feasibility for both ingredients and product, and formulate the feasibility by summing up the scores and divide by total possible scores.
Phew, it sounds so complicated explaining how we did the test, but it was actually easier done than said with the aid of a template. We just keyed in necessary information and everything can be seen clearly.
 |
| Template we used |
Okay, so after the study, we found that three of the ideas: mini crispy spring roll, beet root pumpkin burger, and pizza roll, are fairly attainable, with feasibility rate over 0.8. This is because these ideas are based on currently available product so the ingredients and production are much a big challenge. There's only minor challenges in controlling moisture migration and stability of the product.
Waffle potong on the other hand, is more challenging than the previous three ideas because it is a new form of waffle and that it involves many components, thus increasing the possible problems making it. However, it is still quite attainable given that waffle and those fillings are common in the market.
Finally, brown rice quiche was quite risky to be produced if we couldn't come out with a concrete solution to solve problems we might have in brown rice crust. First, it is very high in glycemic index, given the high sugar content from maltose as the adhesive. Replacing it with oligosaccharides is our current solution but so far we have no back up that it will work. Furthermore, migration of moisture making the crust soggy is another big problem. We resorted to starch coating (crisp film) but the effectiveness was also unsure. Finally, the process of making the crust was also a challenge as we do not have the proper equipment in the research kitchen. So yeah, if we hadn't found any solutions before the finalising stage, I would say it is better for us to give up on this idea.
So, here comes the end of the study. It was considerably an easy and brief test but at the same time gives you a clear picture of the problems you will be facing. Next up, we will go back to the school to interview the kids and parents about their opinion on our products. Finally gathering all the information from this study and the feedbacks to generate our final two concepts, which we name it as beta-concepts, before this semester ends.
Yeah, that's all for this week. Stay tuned for more!
Dong
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment