Week 2

Ideation:

This week, our objective is to come up with an idea of a product we are going to innovate. We mainly focus on what can lead us to actually make the product in Year 3 during our Capstone Project.

There were tons of sources to start with such a peer-reviewed, projects by our seniors and many more.

First ideation - vacuum mopper

Are you tired of cleaning the house? Do you want to reduce your house chores load? When you clean the house, normally you would need to vacuum first before mopping since dust particles and even hair might get stuck on the mop if you did not vacuum.

This idea came from laziness of cleaning the house. It is about a vacuum cleaner that can mop as you go. So by killing two birds with one stone, we decided to innovate a vacuum cleaner that will release hot water vapour onto a surface and be wiped. The hot vapour would leave little residue.

We scraped the first idea since there were already better variants of it. In addition, executing it would be difficult if we ever decided on making a prototype.

Second ideation - biodegradable flip flop

Flip flops were often used and thrown, making one that is biodegradable would make a positive impact on the environment compare to the regular ones. This biodegradable flip flops are made from algae.

Algae have been known to cause destruction to marine life when it goes out of control and grows uncontrollably. Algae bloom limits the amount of dissolved oxygen required for respiration by marine life. Aquatic animals and plants will suffocate to death when there is inadequate dissolved oxygen. Sunlight is blocked by an algae bloom, preventing aquatic plants from photosynthesizing.

Yet another idea has been scrapped. Since flip-flops are not a big contributor to waste and the fact that algae are not that huge of a problem in Singapore at certain times it grew out of control.

Third ideation - biodegradable utensils

Since food wastage is one of the major problem in Singapore that contributed to the waste landfill.

Instead of using algae, we decided to use food waste instead. Mainly organic food waste from plants like fruits and vegetables.

Regular plastic utensils contribute more wastage compared to flip flops, therefore our group decided to go with this idea.

Some guiding questions was giving by our lecturer, Ms Oh. These guiding questions helped us to be more focused on our idea.

We did some researched on how utensils are manufactured and formulated, what ingredients and equipment were needed and what is the shelf life of the biodegradable utensils.

Research

References:

FoodPrint. (2019). Can Food Waste Become Biodegradable Plastic? [online] Available at: https://foodprint.org/blog/biodegradable-plastic-food-waste/. [Accessed 26 April 2021].

sciencedirect. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://www-sciencedirect-com.sp.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0960852421000729 [Accessed 26 April 2021].

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sciencedirect. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://www-sciencedirect-com.sp.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0160412019301357 [Accessed 26 April 2021].

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sciencedirect. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://www-sciencedirect-com.sp.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0924224420306051 [Accessed 26 April 2021].

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sciencedirect. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://www-sciencedirect-com.sp.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S1742706113004327 [Accessed 26 April 2021].

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