Week Two – 20 July 2015

 

This week was the first week of our project paper, Creative Solutions (141.112). During the project day this week, we were briefed on the outline of the paper, and provided with the necessary information in order to begin our research and investigation toward Stage One of the paper.

 

After selecting an industry and product to focus on, we learnt about and started creating a SIPOC Diagram for our product, identifying boundaries and necessary processes within the production of beer. This exercise helped us to identify potential areas where research was required, and a visual idea of our system. We also learnt about creating process flow diagrams in order to visually represent and simplify the more complicated processes within our system.

 

From here we have identified various aspects that require further research that must be conducted before next week in order to continue on with the project. These areas are the process of brewing beer (on both a small and large scale), the history of the beer industry, the beer industry today, the background of beer, the inputs and suppliers of these inputs, and the outputs and customers for the beer industry.

 

 

Week Three – 27 July 2015

 

This week we began working on and developing our webpage. We began to create the pages and links we required, and developed the visual design of our webpage using the guidelines we learnt about from the visual communication slides. We also shared the basic information we had researched last week, and collaborated the necessary information for our SIPOC Diagram and project charter.

 

Our basic webpage design, SIPOC diagram and project charter are due next Monday 3 August (Stage One). After our project day today, we have completed our project charter, got a basic website and have drafted our SIPOC diagram, which needs to be put onto our webpage with the appropriate animations. We will have a meeting on Thursday 30 July to upload our charter and SIPOC to our website, ready for publication on Monday. Before next Friday 7 August, we need to have our individual research (topics otulined in Week Two update) completed and our individual write ups ready for submission, which will complete Stage One.

 

 

Week Four - 3 August 2015

 

This week we provided feedback on others’ website and individually assessed our own in order to identify potential areas of improvement. We also began looking at Stage 2 to see what opportunities there are for developing our industry. We identified four problem areas, technological, social, political and evironmental, which we will individually focus on, researching potential problems and their likelihood for the next few weeks.

 

We also covered the basics of forecasting, which is helpful for our research and write up of Stage 2, where we have to predict problem areas and situations.

 

 

Week Five – 10 August 2015

 

This week we learnt the basic ideas involved in conceptual sketching. This will be helpful when wecome to design potential solutions and will be a useful way to visually communicate our ideas. We are continuing to research the potential issues for the future of the beer industry, looking into other’s perspectives in order to develop a prediction for the likelihood of each issue.

 

We also received feedback on our website from other teams. This feedback was helpful to see how others interpret our website, and identify areas that need improving. We will work on rectifying these issues with our website, and improving the functionality and creativity of our website for the peer assessments in Stage Two.

 

 

Week Six – 17 August 2015

 

This week we had a lesson on Photoshop, so we can use the programme as another form of visual communication. This will be helpful when it comes to creating and designing our poster for the final presentation. We also got group feedback on our SIPOC, PFD, and charter on our website. We made the necessary adjustments to these components and also made changes to our website based on the group feedback we recieved last week.

 

When discussing our progress for our Stage Two research, we found that two topics, political and social, were proving to be very similar. Because of this, we looked further into our industry and decided that economic issues could also be covered, and political and social issues couild be combined in order to reduce repetitiveness and widen our research within the beer industry. As semester break begins next week, we have already made the changes to our website in preperation for the second peer assessment, and will continue with our indivual research over the break ready for submission on the first Monday back.

 

 

Week Seven – 7 September 2015

 

This week we completed our second peer review of the websites and submitted Stage Two. It will be interesting to see how our grades compare to the last peer assessment after the suggested changes were made to our website. We also learnt about intellectual property, which will be interesting and important to consider when it comes to the end of our project. We will be able to theorectically decide what methods of protecting our intellectual property ould be most applicable to our generated ideas and solutions.

 

We were also briefed on Stage Three of the project, which is divided into two parts. From the research conducted in Stage Two, we generated an overall scenario, which integrated each individual section of the Beer Industry and associated potential issues and opportunites. Using this overall scenario, we decided on four problems to focus on for the beginning section of Stage Three. These problems were the decreasing trend in consumption of alcohol, the efficiency of production, the waste products from production, and the economical issues such as the hop shortage due to international demand. This week, we will clearly define our problem and begin generating our ideas for our portfolios.

 

 

Week Eight – 14 September 2015

 

This week we had an introduction to technical drawing. This skill will be helpful as we begin to generate detailed ideas and communicate them to others. It will also help when it comes to fully understanding our team members' ideas in order to combine them into one final idea.

 

We received feedback on our individual Stage One components and peer feedback on our website for Stage Two. We wil make necessary improvements to our website according to the feedback such as removing the animations as they delay the nagivation of our website. 

 

We also used the spare time today to use different idea generation techniques involving both our group and other engineering students. This helped us to gain a wide range of ideas which we can look into and potentially develop further. We discussed with our supervisor different methods and criteria we can use to screen our initial ideas and select 2-3 to explore for our portfolios.

 

 

Week Nine – 21 September 2015

 

This week we had an introduction course to computer aided design using Solid Works. This programme will be helpful for us when we come to develop our ideas further in Stage Three, and need to visually communicate them further into the project. We also had another teamwork session, which was helpful as we near the end of the project, where we have to come togather as a team and collaborate and integrate our individual design to creat an overall solution. 

 

We are continuing to work on our individual idea generation and screening for our Stage Three portfolio meetings. During our supervisor meeting, we helped each other to screen our ideas down to the top two or three, which we will continue to develop in preperation for our individual meetings on Monday.

 

 

Week Ten – 28 September 2015

 

This week we had our individual portfolio meetings for the first part of Stage Three. These were helpful to gauge where we were at on an individual level and identify areas we need to work on as we begin to integrate our solutions together. 

 

Throughout this week, we will work on our design report for the final part of Stage Three, which involves finalising our indivual solution, and planning the implementation of this solution in the the future. As there is no class or supervisor meetins this week, we will have a team meeting to begin to collaborate our ideas and make sure there are no obvious issues or contradictions between our designs. 

 

 

Week Eleven – 5 October 2015

 

This week we each had chosen our final solution so we could begin to work on integrating our solutions together to form one final solution. Due to the different problem sectors we chose, none of our solutions clashed with each other or presented any contradictions. The final solution will cover the inputs of beer, the process of makling the beer, the packaging for the beer, and dealing the waste products of beer. By collaborating our individual solutions into one final solution, we create an overall soltuion which could improve the future of the beer industry in New Zealand.

 

We are each still developing our final individual solutions, and working on our final design and implementation timeline in ready for when we finally put together or combined solution for the website and exhibition next week. 

 

 

Week Twelve –12 October 2015

 

This week we are combining our developed final individual solutions into one overall solution. This solution can then be transferred to our website, and presented on our poster for the final exhibition. Two group members are working on the website, which includes fixing up any previous issues, making sure our final solution aligns with our inital charter, and creating the page displaying and explaining our final solution. The other two group members are working on developing the poster for our display at the exhibition.

 

We are also individually still finalising our Stage Three design report and generating ideas for and creating prototypes to show at the exhibition. We will meet in our peers and collectively as a group frequently throughout the final few weeks to ensure all tasks are completed and we are ready to present our final solution in three weeks time.

 

 

Week Thirteen - 19 October 2015

 

This week we are continuing to focus on our individual tasks for both Stage Four and Stage Five. This involves collaborating our solution, explaining them in an understandable but technical manner, displaying them in a visually appealling way and discussing the implentation of the solution, which involves the timeline, risks and alternatives, and intellectual property. These tasks have been divided amoung the group according to the individual's strengths as we feel this is the best way to complete these tasks to the best of our group's ability.

 

Prototyping and physical displays or models are also being individually developed in preparation for the exhibition. This will aid the visual communication and appeal of our presentation, while making our solution more understanding and memorable.

 

 

Week Fourteen - 26 October 2015

 

This week we are finalising our website, and getting our posters for the exhibition printed. We are having a meeting to check over our website, make sure all links are working and upload any final information required. We are still working on individual prototypes, which we will collectively create this weekend ahead of the exhibition.

 

We are also planning how we are going to verbally explain our problem and present our solutions. We will continue to practice this ahead of the exhibition next week.