7 weeks have passed and just 7 more weeks to the end of DATE 2019..

This past 7 weeks have been a blast! From indulging ourselves in a myriad of delicacies available, to loads of sightseeing in different parts of China, to participating in many industry visits organized for us, to completing an origami design course in ZJU and beginning another, to the cheap and hassle-free online shopping on 淘宝, to the convenient 外卖 great when the weather is just too hot, rainy and humid to even step out of the hostel, to the ease of getting around places with a plethora of transportation options such as Hellobikes, DiDi, public buses and high speed trains,  China’s been really amazing thus far.

While in awe of what China has to offer, one can never forget that we have a theme project to complete during our time here as an exchange student to Zhejiang University 😊 So here are some updates on our theme project, what have we done over the past few weeks, which stage we are currently at and what’s next.

What we have done                

Our project kick-started with a complete market research of the types of courtyard lights already in the global market. As our team was relatively big, we decided to split the workload among us with each one of us researching on the courtyard lights of a particular country. After we have compiled our findings, we had a much better understanding of what’s currently in the market and realised that most of the courtyard lights have no smart features in-built but solely serve as a source of light.

After our market research, we came together to discuss the smart features that we would like to incorporate in our product such as intelligent interactions, sensors, material, physical and lighting characteristics.

We also had a short design-thinking process workshop organized by our teaching assistants and another master student from Japan who was taking part in our project too. It was an eye-opening experience as we got to learn about their design thinking process which was mostly similar to ours but also had their unique differences.

We then proceeded to sketch out some ideas for the lights we want to work on. Since everyone had to come up with 10 ideas each, we had a whopping 80 ideas in that sharing session alone! Some of the ideas were really interesting!

 

Current Stage

After consultation with our professor-in-charge, our teaching assistants felt that we were a step ahead as we have not found a strong purpose for creating a specific type of courtyard light. With that, we spend a night determining the problems that stakeholders face when conducting activities in the courtyard and finally settled on 2 issues that we would like to work on. Currently, we are tasked to consolidate what we have discussed and to come up with users’ experience flow and our solution to the problem.

 

What’s next

After finalizing on what we would like to work on and having concrete plans on how to achieve the smart features of our light, it would be a full start to working on the prototype and preparing for the final presentation.

Click to rate this post!
[Total: 0 Average: 0]

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here