Reflection
Product Service System
Modular Vertical Garden System
When i first read the brief for this assignment i was incredibly confused by what it was asking as i had no idea what a Product Service System (PSS) entailed. The next few lectures seemed to clear this problem up explaining in good detail what a PSS is and how you can go about designing one. The part that really clarified it for me was when we researched and compared existing PSS models and had to choose which area we where going to design for.
The biggest shock about this assignment was that we had never done anything like this before in any of our previous assignments. Not only designing a PSS but also working in a group, this did prove to have its own set of difficulties as every person in the group had their own opinion to share. Even though this opinion sharing set us back in a lot of the design phase of the assignment, the end result came from an incredible amount of refinement and solid research.
There were many options when it came to the type of PSS we were going to improve or refine, some systems included health, transport, and food. These titles are the main concepts that are defined by the many, many sub-headings that exist within them. An example of this is transport being devised of private, public to cars, busses, and trains.
The concept that we chose was food as we found a large gap in the health food section, specifically community gardens. With this concept our group found that the easiest part of the project was creating an idea for the PSS. This was done through extensive research to find the problems that community gardens face. The research revealed that many community gardens had over 60 person waiting lists. This showed the popularity of this type of activity and the major demand for more to be envolved.
The hardest part of the assignment was designing and producing a product that served an essential part of the PSS. I found it incredibly hard due to the fact that one group member would get a great idea, but through further research found the idea to be impossible to apply. This became very disheartening as we came up with hundreds of so called 'good ideas', ranging from starter kits, hydroponic pots, to many concepts of vertical garden systems.
As i mentioned before the opinions of the other group members became an extremely valuable tool in the design process. Although at times the process was frustrating, the difficulties we encountered while designing this product is what made the system we designed so solid.
The next part of our design phase was choice of material, this material had to be appropriate for outdoor use. This type of use has certain needs such as UV resistant, weather resistant, and shatter and drop proof design. The material that we decided on was PP, this material checked all the boxes for the use we needed it for and was a successful candidate for this product.
One problem did arrise in the final few phases of design was that the colour that we had chosen for the material was a white colour. Although the colour white was an appropriate colour the plastic could not have been recycled plastic therefore must have been virgin plastic. This was one of our biggest mistakes and will be noted in future designs.
All in all i found the project a lot of fun and very interesting to find out about all the different types of PSS that are around today. Looking specifically at there strengths and weakness's to find gaps were either another PSS could fit or an improvement could be made. I found that all group members contributed to all parts of the assignment equally and to the final design of the product.
