Ideation part 2 ( FINAL PRODUCT ! )

This is the last blog, I dont know if I supposed to be happy or not, HAHA. Well anyway, introducing the final product, a finally comes true hoverboard, The Dasher. An eco friendly ride substituting petroleum fueled vehicles. Using a lightweight material, making it easy to bring everywhere. As well as the sleek and compact design, enabling the rider to glide in comfortably. The hoverboard comes in additional features such as safety handled, expandable part, and foldable wheel, complementing the whole looks and functions. The hoverboard is a part of a bigger system with special lanes and parking spaces. Here is only the rough sketches i already post on previous blog.

 

Here is some of the colored sketch of the hoverboard.

So the idea is to make a new system which consist the hoverboard as the main ride, then having its own lane because obviously hoverboard will not work above the normal ground. Then the special lane is located above MRT lane, like a flyover. Then because of the small size, it doesnt require a big space as well. Special drawers or cupboards will be provided for free at some area to store approximately 10-15 hoverboards per cupboard with thumb print censor making it more convenient and unlikely to be stolen. Or you can just sling it on your back since it is pretty lightweight. One of the additional feature also let the hoverboard have a foldable wheel that able to function like skateboard once it cruising on normal ground.

 

The concept of the hoverboard is basically using magnetic levitation, which created from two surfaces with the same magnetic polarity and ride one across the other. That way, they will generate a self-propelling motion, making the board hovering above the ground.

It also has advantages such as space saving, eco-friendly, no pollution, active transportation with very little effort, affordable price, minimize crashing accidents, suitable for youngsters and active office workers.

The target markets of the hoverboard are the youngsters and active office workers who doesn't want to be trapped in countless hours traffic jams and public transportation crowds during peak hours. It may indirectly lessen the amount of cars on the road, but with more people using the new, special lane, less people will be using public transportations. People that previously thought it was inconvenient using public transportation because it was too crowded will find it convenient again and shift their transportation choices from private vehicles into public transportation. Besides, using public transportations are so much cheaper and easier rather than purchasing private vehicles.

At last, this is one of the alternatives to diminish the problem of too many vehicles and creating a new and better system for the future. So, what are you waiting for? GRAB YOURS NOW! ;)

Ideation part 1

After what it feels like one week, we gather our ideas consisting the heelys, the hoverboard, and the changing lanes. Below are our sketches referring to the particular object.

The first one is the heelys. Advanced shoes inspired from the attachable wheels for kid's shoes and roller skates. Having its own special lane, suggesting a healthy and active transportation rather than using motorized vehicles.

The second one is the changing lane. The idea is to imitate how the moving stairs in Harry Potter movie works. However the idea is too complicated and hardly practical so the sketches changed from the moving lane into a closed area in which if a vehicle goes in, they will immediately sent to their destination like a teleportation machine.

   

The last idea is the hoverboard. Inspired by the movie "Back to the Future" where there is this ride called hoverboard that can hover above the ground instead of rolling like skateboard. 

Apart from its similarity with skateboard, it is also inspired from one and two motorized scooter that are really exist nowadays.

 

 

In the real life, this technology still under development of Hendo company, but it is the more likely to be true rather than the changing lane so we chose hoverboard as our main design solution, combining it with the heelys and other related features like the special lane, special parking section, additional safety handled and more that will be further explained in the next blog! SEE YA!

 

How to brainstorm the idea

Hi guys, this is the 8th blog already! I wont say it's a short time, but right now we really have to think about the practical solutions of our problem of too many vehicles. First we have to do brainstorming in order to achieve several ideas before we could sort it out and narrow down to some really useful ideas. 

Actually my group and I already did some brainstorming and mindmapping about the solutions before, and here is the result. Because we did this on the first class, we insert the 5W 1H (what, when, where, who, why and how ) as well to analyze the problem.

As you can see for the "How" (how to fix the problem), there are some ways that already existed and applied in the real life such as carpooling, limiting the number of license plates etc, some mainstream ways such as walking, biking etc, some extreme ways such as moving closer to work or school, and also some outside-of-the-box idea but hardly practical such as use iron man robotic suit, make wings and many more. Well it does sound nonsense, but who knows that someday they could really work right? ;)

We also did 1 more mindmap for the solutions that are really applied in some countries such as malaysia, singapore, indonesia, etc, as research purposes and inspirations for the solution that later me and my group will work on. So below are the details!

As the time to make our own design solution is closer, we decided to list up again all the possible ideas to 101 ideas. However it only takes us until 39 before our teacher stop us because we seemed like wasting time, listing the same thing over and over again. Then we decided to choose the top three idea and work on it. The lucky three we chose are the heelys (advanced shoes), the hoverboard, and the changing lane.

After that we decided to divide parts and do our own developments & sketches of the chosen idea before we try to compile all the idea into 1 big project. I got the hoverboard, while my groupmates, Haeseul, got the heelys, and Afiqah, got the changing lane.

So, are you curious about how the development and the idea goes? Off to my next blog! ;)

Site Study (too many vehicles on road)

When and where is the worst time and place of Singapore's road congestion? The when is simple and occurs everywhere, during peak hours in morning and evening. Morning peak hours ranging from 8 to 9 am when everyone is going to work, while the evening peak hours ranging from 5 to 7 pm when everyone is off from work. In contrast, during 1 to 5 am is free traffic hours.



While the where question answered after doing a six months survey in 2010 by TomTom GPS, showing Clementi and Bukit Timah as the leading traffic in the morning with 2 and a half times longer (147 percent increase) during busy hours compared to non-traffic-hours. In the other hand, Tampines is the worst traffic during evening commute, followed by Bukit Timah, with 96 and 95 percent increase respectively. Below is the diagram of the morning and evening commute showing different level of congestion on Singapore roads provided by TomTom company.

According to the diagrams, the most time difference up to more than 20 minutes which may sounds not too bad but still upsetting the daily commuters. Through this survey, TomTom's aim is to highlight the worst congested area as well as encouraging people to consider alternative routes and departure times. 

However, even after knowing this daily traffic, some people still push their luck, going through the same route at the same time everyday. Cheryl Tay from Singapore Yahoo News interviewing Charles Ma who lives in Tampines and work at Lorong Chuan. He admitted that he always leave work at 7 pm and never drive home during non peak hours so he always caught in traffic jams. He said it takes him 30 minutes just to get out of the jam at Tampines.

It concludes the general idea of our problem, which basically is the exceeding amount of cars on several main roads during peak hours. It is definitely a troublesome and annoying experience, however a practical action must be taken in order to diminish the problem. Cheers! :)

References :

http://www.onemotoring.com.sg/publish/onemotoring/en/motoring_buzz/Motoring_News/Best_and_worst_travel_times_in_Singapore.html

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/fit-to-post-autos/where-busiest-roads-singapore-005656369.html

Research Method

Well I think I talk about the problem too much, now is the time to move to the solutions. But then how? First we have to propose research methods in which we will further understand the problem better and the way to resolve it as well. Research method itself is "a process used to collect information and data for the purpose of making business decisions", reviewed by businessdictionary.com. Or in our case more relevant as the purpose of making better solutions.

For the common research methods we have literature research, surveys, interviews, focus groups, case study, and many more. A literature search involves reviewing all readily available materials. These materials can include newspapers, magazines, reports, on-line data bases, and any other published materials. Mostly finding data from the internet is the fastest and most convenient way to get information. It is a very inexpensive method of gathering information, although it often does not yield timely information.

For survey, it is basically giving a group of people series of same questions aiming for different answers in a large scale and short amount of time. Survey can be in form of telephone in which the interviewer already preparing for the questions but allowing for some opinion probing, mail, even though it takes longer time to complete, or the most famous one is email and internet survey. It is relatively new but the fastest and the most cost effective way.

For interview, it is a way to get-in-depth and comprehensive information. It involves or more interviewing other person for detailed information that they usually will not answer in other survey methods. Typically, an interviewer will ask questions from a written questionnaire and record the answers verbatim.

While a focus group is used as a preliminary research technique to explore peoples ideas and attitudes. It is often used to test new approaches (such as products or advertising), and to discover customer concerns. A group of 6 to 20 people meet in a conference-room-like setting with a trained moderator. The moderator leads the group's discussion and keeps the focus on the areas they want to explore. 

Lastly, a case study is an in depth study of a particular situation rather than a sweeping statistical survey. It is a method used to narrow down a very broad field of research into one easily research-able topic. Whilst it will not answer a question completely, it will give some indications and allow further elaboration and hypothesis creation on a subject.

Then a unique research method can be done by mixing some common methods together into a flexible yet useful way. For example, we can do mixing between focus group and personal interview to get a general sample and also in depth answers from several people. 

However for our particular problem of too many vehicles, me and my group decided to use literature research as the background data, and internet survey as well as case studies for further research. Why, because it required less effort yet encompassing broader sample.

So, until next time people! :)

References :

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/research-methodology.html

https://www.statpac.com/surveys/research-methods.htm

https://explorable.com/case-study-research-design

Who should we empathize on?

Back again to my precious journal :''. I CANNOT BELIEVE that im actually 6 blogs late. I do not know that i have to update it every week, or maybe i was just not listening to the teacher back then. HAHA. Anyway i have to catch up from week 2. THEN, here we go!

The topic for week 2 is empathizing the people who caught this problem. Yes, this problem, our problem, "too many cars". Ive been discussing this on few blogs before but i will do it more specifically in this blog. So, who should we empathize in this problem? The direct result of too many vehicles on the road is traffic jam, of course. And that would make the the user of the road as the one we should empathize on. However it does not signify greatly when they are not in urgent needs. Maybe they will late for work, or school, but it is already common nowadays and still counted as light disadvantages. But does it ever cross your mind if someone in a dying state need a fast medical assistance and every second counts? Well, it happens a lot. And yes, not few of them are died because of that. Here is one of the story.

Beijing woman dies because ambulance stuck in traffic, reviewed by the Urban Country from Shanghaisit in 13 December 2012. Here is the exact report :

“A woman has died in Beijing when the ambulance that was transporting her to hospital got stuck in traffic. 

An emergency physician working alongside the paramedics vented her frustration online, “The scene of the accident is no more than 3 kilometers from the hospital, yet it took us a good 40 minutes to arrive there! Barely any cars made way for our ambulance! So woeful!” The tweet, posted to Weibo by user ‘Monica-Xiaomo’, was shared over 30,000 times. 

Other Weibo users responded to the doctor’s frustration, some blaming the drivers for having “cold-blooded souls” that they would not move out of the way for an ambulance (though, to be fair, in very heavy traffic there is little one driver can do). Others pointed to the allegedly frequent abuse of sirens by police cars and ambulances which they said had led to a “loss of trust”. 

The driver of the ambulance told Sina News that about half the drivers on the roads typically do not move out of the way of an ambulance. Worse, some drivers “purposely slow down ahead of me if I signaled them to move to other lanes”.

It is a quite ironic remembering the distance was so close yet they cannot managed to bring her in time. It is absolutely because of the severe traffic jam led from too many vehicles. However it is also from the lack of care from the other driver that must have been stress as well being stuck in a long congestion.



From this case we are reminded again to care about out surrounding, about something happens even though it is not directly related to us. It makes us learn to step on other people shoes and imagine how if something similar happened to us. How if we become the family of the victim or the victim herself. In the end, it is the core of the problem that we have to fight, that is the exceeded amount of vehicles on the road. And it is our responsibility to take part! :)


References :
http://www.theurbancountry.com/2012/12/beijing-woman-dies-because-ambulance.html

Solutions based on Cultures

HI PEEPS! I know it's already in the middle of the night, but im still all pumped up to do this blog! well actually it's because i woke up super late today, HAHA. Anyway, this week topic has something to do with culture. And, because my chosen topic is "too many cars" so it is about finding solutions from our cultures, well, my culture in this case. For all you don't know I am Indonesian and so I will pick something related with Indonesian cultures.

Initially there wasn't that many cars in indonesia. It only changes in these past decades. But then that would make a quite straight forward answer since that makes no available solution related to my culture for this problem. But then let us see the past transportation in Indonesia.

As a maritime and agrarian country, Indonesia had a lot of farmers and fisherman. They usually led a modest life and chose to walk or cycle for a short distance destination.

Below is called "sepeda onthel", which literally means pedaling bike. It's a heritage from Dutch regime. Generally they are suitable for urban environments and they focus more on comfort and practicality instead of speed or efficiency. The gears are default and it has a front light and backpack frame to transport items.

Not only them, of course, a lot of people were actually using these 2 method. There were even people that open service to escort people to their destination using bike. This is called "ojek sepeda". It was famous in 1970, later on they use motor cycle instead of bike.

Other transportation called "becak" or trishaw, which also use bicycle as its main part, but have an additional seating in front that usually able to fit 2-3 persons.

The other transportation is using horse power called "andong" and able to take 4-5 persons inside. Andong has 2 wheels while another similar version of andong called "dokar" has 4 wheels. They both used in different part of Indonesia and the amount of horse can vary.

The picture below is a traditional transportation using buffaloes power. Commonly used in suburb areas instead of cities downtown. This is called "pedati".

As the time goes on, people are more familiar with motor vehicles. The first common public transportation known is "kopaja". It is similar to bus but the size could vary. It has their own route but can be stopped anywhere unlike the new transjakarta bus which has its own bus stop.

The other famous transportation that still widely used until now is "angkot". It is smaller than kopaja or bus and also has its own route. It is also can be stopped everywhere

However as time goes on, people's mindset is slowly changing, their purchasing power are increasing and also their lifestyle are improving. They prefer using their own car because it is definitely more comfortable, and since the population growth are always rising, the congestion become inevitable. Maybe if they care to try using these-mentioned-transportation back, the congestion wont be as severe. I wont dare to say it will completely dispel congestion, but i guess it will lessen the pollution, using only public transportation or non-motorized vehicle. And of course it will diminish out main problem of "too many vehicles"!

SO, this is my culture, how about yours? ;)

References :

http://dimaszon.blogspot.sg/2013/01/10-transportasi-tradisional-indonesia.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadster_(bicycle)