Drawing Inspiration from Personal Experience

The 48 hour time limit forces us to ideate and prototype quickly. Over the course of brainstorming, I have learnt to ideate solutions by drawing inspiration from my personal experience. Initially, we could not brainstorm effectively to identify a potential problem that we want to solve. However, we eventually conceptualized Trashifai by looking back at our past experiences.

Trashifai was inspired by our experience in Germany, where they take recycling seriously. We found it difficult to determine if an object was recyclable; for instance, although pizza boxes are made of cardboard, they cannot be recycled since they are soiled with grease and food items. Thus, we created a smart waste bin to help us identify the recyclables and sort them accordingly.

My role in the team comprised of creating a mobile application that allows users to take a photo of the trash and identify if it is recyclable, hardware prototyping, and creating our team website.

Learning AGILE

Our team had trouble adopting AGILE principles initially. We could not identify areas of improvement and were slow on adapting new working processes.

Over time, as we improved team communications and became more open to new ideas, we managed to adopt AGILE principles more effectively.

Through this, I learned to be flexible and conduct introspection to identify areas of improvement and problems before they escalate into more severe ones.

Dealing with Uncertainties

The design of the support system required mechanical engineering knowledge, which I had not been exposed to before. Thus, I had to do extensive research before I could contribute effectively in design meetings. This project has also allowed me to learn about design thinking processes such as brainstorming techniques and rapid prototyping.

I oversaw the circuitry and Arduino code design of the control system, and the lack of electronics knowledge made this a hard task. After some fruitless research, I consulted the lab assistant for advice, and managed to build the circuitry successfully eventually. With the circuitry design complete, the coding of the Arduino was an easy task, since I have coding experience in Arduino.

I gained confidence in dealing with uncertainties and learned about design thinking through this project.

Importance of Work Culture

The difference in work culture and language barrier made it hard for me to integrate into the company successfully. However, the friendly environment in the company and weekly lunch get-togethers helped me bond with the team.

I experienced AGILE project management in a corporate environment. I realised that the key factor to ensure the effectiveness of AGILE project management was organization culture. Employers must be flexible and open to criticism, while employees must be willing to voice their own opinions for AGILE to be effective.

Thus, it is important to change the organization culture first before implementing any project management techniques. Techniques that suit one organization may not be effective in other organizations unless the work culture can adapt to the demands of the project management technique.