PART 2: DRIVERS NEEDS

I. RANKING AND NEEDS ORGANIZING

In order to focus on our objectives, we need to identify the needs of drivers who uses the access card (Touch n Go). The product should fulfill the customer needs in order to obtain marketability.

Ranking the needs tells us the importance of these needs so that we can be more focused onto it in choosing the best ideas for the product development.

We found that the needs that are essential to our product are:

1) Easy to handle: Drivers need something easy to use in order to quick access their touch n go card

2) Sustainable: environmental friendly 

3) Affordable prices: We need something that any society level driver can buy

4) Last longer: Drivers need something that will last longer. We need to manufacture from a very strong material.

We will now rank the needs from 1 to 5, where 5 is the most important and 1 is vice versa.

Customer Needs	Rank
Easy to handle	5
Sustainable	3
Affordable price	4
Last Longer	5

II. INTERPRETING THE CUSTOMER NEEDS

Customer feedback is our important platform in order to ensure our target auditions is reached and their needs are fulfill. 

To get close to this more demanding customer, we really need to get inside his or her head. 

Here are several ways to do it: 

1. ·        Stand in your customer’s shoes.-  Understand your customer’s full range of choices, as well as his or her ecosystem of suppliers, partners etc.--of which you may be part.  This exercise will also deepen the understanding of competitors and help to be better anticipate their moves.
2. ·         Staple yourself to a customer’s order.  - Be a customer that want something and see where the product low point so that it can be improved.
3. ·         Learn together with customers.  - Understand the mindset of potential customers and also helped them to influenc e that mindset.
4. ·         Lean forward and anticipate.  - Focus on what customers will want tomorrow, as Steve Jobs and Richard Branson did so exquisitely.  Try to predict future market.

III. TRANSLATE THE NEEDS INTO SPECIFICATIONS

After knowing the needs, we then transform it to a more reliable and salable product. In order to do so, these following steps must be taken. 

STEP 1 : IDEA DEVELOPMENT

Idea development comes from the customer needs and problems. One of the example is stated in the previous entry of this blog. 

STEP 2 : PRODUCT SCREENING

Numerous idea may comes during idea development steps. That is why the idea screening stage is important. At this stage only the best idea which fulfill all needs and forecast to generate more income, less cost to make,  will be selected.

STEP 3 : PRELIMINARY DESIGN AND TESTING

At this stage,  a prototype will be build based on the best ideas. Field test will be conducted to see if our product satisfy driver's needs.

STEP 4 FINAL DESIGN

The last stage where chosen prototype and qualified field test result is used as a basis in its development. No more idea development will be considered in this stage. 

Final Design

Manufacturing

To know more of our product development... Stay tuned for our next entries...

Assessment: Batteries & fuel cells

The following is the assessment of week 7:

A company has asked for proposal to develop a cordless, wall mounted power supply, giving six volts, presumably for security cameras, smoke detectors, and other equipment. The new power supply should replace four D-cells, which last about six months. The company states that the benchmark gives 0.55 mA continuous current and 151.2 seconds, 800 mA burst per hour. The new power supply should last twice as long, if it needs to be replaced, the procedure should only take a couple of minutes. The company seeking this technology has focused on three ideas:

• A better battery
• A small fuel cell
• A battery supplemented by a solar cell running off building lights, which recharges the battery

Our task is to choose the best candidate that comes closest to meeting the company's criteria.

The following are the options of power sources with their properties:

	Voltage (V)	Energy/Volume (W hr/L)	Charge time	Cycles	Cost($)
D cells	1.5	60	2 h	1000	15
Lead acids	2	40	8 h	1000	10
Lithium	3.6	100	1 h	1000	50
Hydrogen fuel cell	0.8	10	2 min	Large	500
Methanol fuel cell	0.5	80	2 min	Uncertain	500

We have come up with the following table to better compare all of the candidates with the criteria given by the company

Selection Criteria	W	D cells (Benchmark)		Lead acids		Lithium		Hydrogen fuel cells		Methanol fuel cells
Lifespan	0.3	5	1.5	5	1.5	5	1.5	8	2.4	4	1.2
Charge time	0.3	5	1.5	2	0.6	6	1.8	8	2.4	8	2.4
Voltage	0.15	5	0.75	6	0.9	8	1.2	3	0.45	2	0.3
Energy Density (Size)	0.15	5	0.75	4	0.6	8	1.2	2	0.3	6	0.9
Cost	0.1	5	0.5	6	0.6	3	0.3	1	0.1	1	0.1
Total			5		4.2		6.0		5.65		4.9

More weightage are give to 'Lifespan' as the company specifically mentioned that the new power supply should last twice as long. Weightage for 'cost' are the lowest as its importance is less compare to other criteria for this particular company

The properties of Energy Density (W hr/L) is used to rank the size of the batteries and fuel cells as higher energy density indicates smaller batteries or fuel cells. Lifespan of the power source are compared from the number of charge cycles for each of them. Higher charge cycles means the batteries or the fuel cell are able to charge more number of times before they reach the end of their life.

The results from our selection table shows that lithium is the winner from all the potential candidates. Although it doesn't last twice as long and takes more than 2 min to recharge (1 hour). Its small size with high energy density and its high voltage makes up for what it's lack and came up as superior to other power source candidates.

Part 1: Market Research

We are targeting our potential customers who live in the city which uses quick access to enter gate or parking area. 

Automated parking gate

This market research obtain through observation, informal interview and written surveys. In order to specify our target group, we focused on drivers who always uses “Touch and Go” services all the time as their daily routine. 

We often come to a situation which the car in front of us takes too much time just to touch his/her access card because of these following reasons:

1- the car distance is to far from the access machine

2- the driver itself is short in height

Sample of access card (Touch n Go)

Card touches the access machine

Difficulties in performing the task

Our main objectives is to ease up the task to prevent time wasting and also to ensure clear traffic inside parking area in malls, office building or etc. Our informal interview will circulates around heavy user of "touch n go" cards to see what are their potential needs in order to solve this everyday problem.

DON'T FORGET TO STAY TUNED WITH OUR ENTRIES TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THIS PROJECT!!