- Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?
-Collectively as a group, the Plastech team strives to focus on sustainability and empower others to reduce environmental damage. We all have different skills, but come together to execute our shared goal. Our design process thus far is:
Define the problem that is causing the situation: The Philippines has an extreme plastic waste problem – the country as a whole generates 2.7 million tonnes of plastic waste annually and 20 percent of that leaks into the oceans. Not only this, but out of 105 million Filipinos, nearly seven million rely on unsafe and unsustainable water sources.
Identify constraints: Some constraints would be a lack of knowledge on elements of the culture/market of the Philippines and whether or not people in this country would find a use for our potential product line; additionally we may be constrained if we have to convince people that there is a need for this product and a need to recycle items to make new items. Also, we don’t know if we will be able to scale any of our products up yet. We also need to look into the constraints of the machines we will use, and their capabilities regarding making items we want to produce.
Brainstorm multiple solutions: Our main objective is to transform waste into assets; thus, we want to take the large amount of plastic waste in the Philippines and turn it into something people can use again. We wanted to start to focus on structural building materials, but came up with the following list in our brainstorming session: brick, beams, fence/fencing slats, fence post, shingles, ceiling tiles, floor tiles, windows, doors, plumbing pipes, insulation, valves, traffic cones, countertops, wire coating, filters for furnace/AC units, gutters, latters, drywall, bathtubs/toilets, gravel, fishing nets, roof plates/siding, planters, gardening tools, brackets, pothole fillers, billboard posts, table stand, shelving/storage, bed frame, light shade, and umbrellas.
Select the most promising solution: The PlasTech team decided to focus on producing five main items: gutters and rain barrels (to simultaneously combat the issue of plastic and poor water quality), bricks, decorative tiles, and paving usages.
Develop a prototype to your solution: We plan on prototyping each of these machines first, and seeing which items can be produced using which machines.
Test/Evaluate Prototype: We plan on testing how strong and durable our products are (especially the bricks that plan on being used as construction materials). We also plan on testing how impurities (ex: bottle caps) may affect the strength of our products.
Iterate to improve prototype: We will continuously test our machines and the products they will produce, and make improvements to enhance the quality of our products until they are durable and ready to be sold to consumers.
Communicate your solution: We want to communicate our solution to junk shops; since they are already the middleman and sell the plastics that scavengers find, we want to try and have them use the machine to create recycled products and sell them as well for people to purchase.
2. Identify your three most important stakeholders and list five UNIQUE attributes for each one of them.
- Entrepreneurs/Junk Shops
Demographics: Filipino, small business owners
Socio-Economics: Lower class, low income
Geographic: Philippines, rainy and windy climates, 1.78 million people in Manila
Psychological Variable: Sees value in trash
Behavioral: Dumpster diving and buys trash from people - Nanays
Demographics: Middle-age married Filipino
Socio-Economic: Unemployed low income class
Geographic: Philippines, rainy and windy climates, 1.78 million people in Manila
Psychological Variables: Middle-age women who have fulfilled their parental roles and are seeking employment to improve quality of life
Behavioral: Lives on sachets due to low income - NGOs
Demographics: Filipinos of all occupations
Socio-Economic: People from all classes and income level
Geographic: Philippines, rainy and windy climates, 1.78 million people in Manila
Psychological Variables: Banding together in pursuit of achieving a common goal such as deviating plastic from the environment
Behavioral: Reducing plastic usage in day-to-day life
3. Identify three ways in which you will validate your project concept, technology, usability, and business model.
- Conduct experimentation to determine the allowable contamination level in recycled plastics for building blocks
- Determine whether or not the junk shop business and market are willing to invest in our injection molding machinery for the production of recycled plastic products through research
- Create prototypes of building blocks designs to test whether they are secure, and sturdy. Utilizes plastic’s flexible properties.
4. Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.
- Have you ever thought about where trees get their mass from? I never really thought about it either, until watching one of Mark Rober’s YouTube videos (he isn’t my personal friend, but I love his YouTube videos). From one video I learned: it comes from thin air. The tree sees a carbon dioxide molecule moving by and uses energy from the sun to take the carbon out of the air and it uses the carbon to grow in size. I never knew this concept previously, and it is pretty cool.
- My roommate is a psychology major and is enrolled in the class called Adulthood and Aging. She told me that in class she learned that the dependency ratio of workers/non-workers for Social Security in 1945 was 35/1, but by 2030 it is predicted to be 2/1. I knew the concept behind social security, but I never noticed how much this concept could change over time and thus influence me in the future as I get older.
- My friend is a mathematics major and said that in China, they count differently: for the number 75, you need to say that you have 7 tens first. 7 tens is how 70 is represented. Once you have the tens place in Chinese, you can finish writing the number with the character for 5. I thought this was interesting to see the concept behind how they count in China compared to how we count.