Blog Entry 1: Takeaways from the Tutorial Sessions & Practical 1 (Week 1 to 3)👩‍🏫👩‍🔧

Heyyy everyone!! Here comes my first blog entry regarding my ICPD lessons:)

During my first 3 weeks of ICPD lessons, I have learned about many things like:

1. Classification of chemical product design

2. "Pain Points" in product designing

3. Needs Identification and Quiz

Adding on, I also...

• Brainstorming session with my team about our first chemical product design

• Reflected on the usefulness of Tuckerman's team formation model

• The importance of literature review

• Finally the takeaways from our first practical session

Week 1

Classification of chemical product designs

Chemical product designs are classified into commodities, molecular products, micro-structured products, and chemical devices.

Commodities

It consists of products that are made in large quantities, the traditional focus on chemical engineering and made through reaction engineering and unit operations such as grains, beef, oil, and natural gas.

Molecular Products

It consists of products that possess specific chemical structures and are discovered through research which are exemplified by pharmaceuticals. They sell for much more than the cost of their ingredients example performing a particular task which is having medicine that cures diseases. This product depends on two key things like discovery and time to market.

Micro-structure Products

It consists of products that have specific functions such as the chemical organization on the scale of micrometers, typically less than 100μm. The most challenging step in product design is converting consumer needs into measurable specifications which often include psychological factors (e.g. creamy thick texture of ice cream).

Chemical Devices

It is a device that has miniature processes which accomplish a particular chemical transformation and provides convenience. Examples like our Covid-19 Antigen Rapid Test (ART) kits or coffee machines.

Week 2

"Pain Point" in Product Designing

Pain points refer to specific problems faced by a user of a product or service. These pain points can eventually lead to the user's abandonment of the product or service. Some common pain points can be classified under interaction, purchasing, compatibility, and functionality. Interaction - Long wait times for customer service - A limited range of communication channels - Conflicting or inaccurate support messaging

Purchasing - Confusion about payment methods - Lack of security - Issues with pricing transparency

Compatibility - A lack of support for certain devices or operating systems - Bugs and other issues arising from compatibility issues - Failure to offer consistent cross-platform performance

Functionality - Outdated features - Glitches and bugs - A lack of features One pain point that I have personally experienced will be ordering online stuff from ezbuy is that we only can currently be permitted one delivery address per user's accounts and there's no option save products for future uses.

Hence, using shopee or lazada enables me to have the option to maintain multiple delivery addresses in one profile, provide e-wallet options in the payment gateway, filter based on bestsellers, save products for future purchases e.g. wishlist, and have timely delivery of the goods.

Brainstorming with my team about our own product After a sudden task given to us during the 3rd lesson, we have to create our own product design of chemical devices, my team (Asraf, Insyirah, Brian, and Eshvin) and I were at a loss of what to do at first as we kept giving wrong ideas on civic engineering design and chemical process design. However, the topic of making a healthier and easier with accessible options for customers came into our ideas.

Asraf came out with the idea of making a clarified butter using unsalted butter (which you can add your flavor or herbs into it) or salted butter (where you get your flavor from the butter by itself).

And the idea of having a device to skim out the clarity of the butter and having a heating element inside this device. This device is able to heat and melt the butter and during the process of heating, there will be a sieve to collect the foam from the melted butter.

To add on, Asraf created a prototype design for our product as it is not produced in the world yet therefore he uses the fusion app to create this 3D model of the sketch below:

With that Asraf decided to try an experiment in making clarified butter using the available items:

Learning reflection

• Tuckerman's Team Formation Model

Tuckerman's Team Formation Model includes 5 stages, which are: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning

Forming Team acquaints and establishes ground rules. Formalities are preserved and members are treated as strangers. Storming Members start to communicate their feelings but still view themselves as individuals rather than part of the team. They resist control by group leaders and show hostility. Norming People feel part of the team and realize that they can achieve work if they accept other viewpoints. Performing The team works in an open and trusting atmosphere where flexibility is the key and hierarchy is of little importance. Adjourning The team conducts an assessment of the year and implements a plan for transitioning roles and recognizing members' contributions.

Hence, I find that Tuckerman's team formation model is useful and beneficial to us. This is because it forces us to work with different people that have different strengths and points of view, which can help us to adapt to different working environments and styles that will be useful in our future working industry where teamwork and communication are even more crucial.

However, without knowing I have put Tuckerman's team formation into my project, especially in the modules Laboratory and Process Skills 1 & 2, and Process Operation Skills 1. As our lecturers assigned us with different people to work therefore I was grouped up with different classmates of different opinions, we managed to overcome difficulties and pull through to the end with the acceptance of each others' differences.

• Importance of literature review

Literature reviews are extremely important in the designing of a product as it allows us to collate and review sources that are relevant to our research. We also can assess the extent of research on the topic so that we can design our product more accurately by considering more factors. Firstly, we can also use those publications as a reference to our product design to help keep us on track. Secondly, we can be able to identify new angles or new points of view that we have never considered before and facilitate further exploration with research on our product design. Lastly, we can ensure that there is no unintended plagiarism between our own product design and research that others already released publications.

Week 3

Needs Identification and Quiz

Before we end our lesson for week 3 tutorial, by completing the DCHE Digital fabrication Safety Quiz as without doing the quiz we were not allowed to step into the labs for our safety. Before this lesson I have gone through some of the slides and videos on 3D printing and laser cutting however it was hard as some questions were not discussed or in the slides or video. My class finds the quiz difficult as we struggled until one of my classmate, Jiaxin managed to get full marks therefore she help us through the quiz and we learn from our mistakes from the quiz.

Takeaways from my first practical session

During my first practical on 5th May 2022, we have the practical session was split into 3 parts,

• Part 1: Brew Coffee (Process Observation)

• Part 2: Reverse Engineering

• Part 3: Air Lift Pump

Part 1: Brew Coffee (Process Observation) In Part 1 of the practical session, my team and I were tasked to brew coffee from coffee grounds using a coffee-making machine (BD100®). To do so, we had to follow a set of procedures that were provided to us using 300 mL of water and 30 g of coffee grounds.

At first, my team and I were lost with what to do as we thought we just have to brew the coffee normally and measure the given products. Despite that, we scrambled at the start of the experiment in fear of lacking behind the other teams. With the help of our lecture, we have to observe when the first drip of coffee and when the coffee machine will make a lot of noise.

Part 2: Reverse Engineering

After completion of Part 1, we learned to operate BD100® and to brew a cup of coffee. We also noted that Part 1 was rather identical to an experiment on coffee leaching that we have done in our Laboratory and Process Skills 2 module (CP5202) in Year One. Using our knowledge gained from CP5202, we noted that BD100® uses the concept of leaching to brew coffee. We also concluded that BD100® works by heating water to extract coffee solubles from coffee grounds to produce coffee.

During the disassembling of the coffee machine, we were able to discover that the coffee maker is packed with all sorts of features that enable it to function efficiently. One notable feature was the one-way valve that is similar to the check valve that we have learned about in our Year 1A modules in ICHE, which prevents backflow of the water to maximize the water available to make the cup of coffee.

The photo below shows the Front View of the internal structure of BD100®:

The photo below shows the side view of the internal structure of BD100®:

Aid schematic diagram that I have drawn:

Part 3: Air Lift Pump During part 3 of the practical session, my team and I designed and performed an experiment to determine the relationship between submergence ratio (submergence length ÷ total length of the pipe, which is the sum of static lift and static head) and pump flow rate. But the pump flow rate remains constant throughout the past 10th attempt.

Below is my group experimental data and graph data:

Throughout this part 3 completion of this experiment, we figured out that the higher the submergence ratio, the higher the flow rate.

Hope you all will like, share and subscribe to my blog for more amazing content from this ICPD modules and with my team:) Stay tuned for my weekly blog!!!