Entry 2

 Hellooo ✌👽✌, in this entry, I shall share what went down in Week 4.

Week 4: SCAMPER Ideation and Refining 

In Week 4, Dr Noel introduced the SCAMPER Framework to us. This framework is commonly used for brainstorming ideas. It focuses on generating quantity over quality ideas.

S - Substitute

C - Combine

A - Adapt

M - Modify

P - Put to another use

E - Eliminate

R - Reverse

Through this activity, I managed to bond and have fun with my team.

SCAMPER (SCAMP)

SCAMPER (E and R)

These are pictures taken from our team's SCAMPER Brainstorm session.

For context, our original idea was "Cooling Gel Headphones". We then utilised SCAMPER to create new ideas.

Some honourable mentions from the activity:

• Cooling Headphones with dehumidifying properties (Combine)
• Cooling Chair (Adapt)
• Cooling Mattress (Substitute)
• Cooling Pillow (Substitute)
• VR Headset with Cooling Gel (Modify)
• Just the use of the Cooling Gel (Eliminate)
• Drinking Hat with Headphones (Modify)
• Cooling Jacket (Adapt)

However, later on, we realised we needed to make adjustments to our SCAMPER and met during the week to make the edits. 

Why?

Mavis and Ruba realised that some of our new ideas did not relate to our original idea, "Cooling Gel Headphones" and should still be in the realm of headphones. Hence we made the change to some of our ideas.

We finally identified the final 4 ideas to focus on for Feasibility and COWS Analysis.

Our Team's final few SCAMPER Ideas

Feasibility Study:

My team conducted Feasibility Analysis by utilising the template provided and went through each idea selected above as a team, to answer the questions with logical reasoning and cross-check with each other.

Example of our team's Feasibility Analysis

From the feasibility analysis, we eliminated one idea; the VR Headset, since it was expensive (>$2000). Hence, I learnt that feasibility analysis helps us remove ideas that are non-practical right from the start.

COWS🐄🐄:

We used COWS to select the best idea out of the ones shortlisted previously.

For this, we came up with a few criteria that we felt were important to our product, followed by weightage for each component and how each idea fairs against the criteria listed.

COWS Decision Matrix for our Final 3 ideas

While doing COWS, we definitely had difficulties:
- Unsure of which Criteria to have

- Scoring to give to each idea

Initially, our discussion on COWS felt very dry and no ideas were flowing. I even tried looking back at the feasibility study to see if there was anything the team could use.

Finally, our team managed to get the ball rolling and we came up with the criteria to use in our COWS Matrix.

For Scoring, here's the reasoning behind how we gave some of the scores.

To name a few,

Feasibility - Count the total number of ticks from our feasibility study sheet

Cooling effect - It was obvious which idea had good cooling; dehumidifying headphones do not provide cooling since they only remove moisture.

Overall Reflection:

To reflect on the use of SCAMPER, I feel that it is a handy way for a team to brainstorm ideas when there is nothing new.

Furthermore, Dr Noel challenged the class to not use electronics to search for ideas from the Internet. By doing this, we tapped on our mind's creativity to synthesise wild and new ideas to call our own. 

After this lesson, it became a running joke for us, chemical engineering students, to mention SCAMPER when generating ideas. 

For example, my class chairperson and teammate, Jun Hao, requested the class to come out with ideas for our upcoming class gathering, and the class made a joke about using SCAMPER for it.

Lastly, I felt that the idea screening process was beneficial for us to eliminate non-practical/feasible/important ideas and improve the quality of our ideas originally created using SCAMPER.