Appendices

Our Survey

Question	Yes	No
Do you find it difficult to carry an umbrella around especially on public transport?	10	0
Do you find it troublesome to keep the umbrella after rain?	7	3
Do you rather carry an umbrella separately because of the above reasons?	5	5
Would you prefer something light and portable?	10	0
Do you mind paying for something that is lighter and portable?	10	0

After our survey, we have came to a conclusion that our product is practical and therefore we should carry out building our product as planned.

Acknowledgements

We have many people to thank for the success of this project.

1. Miss Phan, our teacher in charge of our group
2. The GRACE teacher in charge, Mr. Peh, who has given us all the materials that were necessary in completing the project
3. All of the group member’s parents who had helped out with this project
4. And of course, all of our group members who have put in a lot of effort in making this project successful. First we start with Chun Hian, who has been a great help in thinking of what materials would be suitable in making our umbrella, coming up with the display board and leading the group for this whole project. Secondly, Gideon who has helped in making this report and the video. Thirdly, we would like to thank Clinton and Hao Ee in their important parts in creating the powerpoint and also helping Gideon and Chun Hian with their many ideas on the umbrella.

Conclusion

We would sincerely like to thank our teacher, Miss Phan, though she is now back in America, for helping us through this project thick and thin. She has certainly been a great help to us during her time in Singapore. After doing this project, we have certainly learnt the importance of innovation. This is when we learn that even though we are in such an advanced world, with so much improvements in technology and living, we must still step up and start to think about how we can improve our lives as if we rely too much on technology, we would one day be turned against it. So we have to think on how life can be improved without technology. This certainly is a challenge due to our over reliance on technology. Our group had to brainstorm a lot of ideas to improve on our product. This provoked a lot of thought processes while we try to find a solution to solve our problem. With this, we have certainly learned how we have to think further and broader to solve our problems. This is one of the many things that we have learnt through this project. Also, I feel that our group has certainly gone closer together. We have all worked together and have gotten to learn about one another better. We all had to put our differences aside and start to work together as a team to accomplish our project. Now, we would be able to know each and every one of group member’s strengths and weaknesses. I would also like to thank the GRACE committee for the chance to carry out this project. Though the project is not that successful, I am sure that our group has learned a lot from it, especially teamwork. I hope that all of our hard work would contribute to society, and that the product would help everyone in a possible way.

Analysis and Findings

In this section, we would explain the reason for why we have chosen the different materials that we used for our bag umbrella. Firstly, we have chosen galvanized wire for the reason that it is cheap and durable. This would help us in our tight budget as one whole bunch of the wire only costs a few dollars. The only minor trade-off of the galvanized wire is that it is quite sharp and thus it might be able to pierce the person who is using the umbrella unintentionally when the person hits the umbrella. Secondly, we have chosen to use plastic wrapping for the cover of our umbrella. We used this because it is a cheaper substitution then nylon which is used in normal umbrellas. The plastic wrapping is one example of how something that is cheaper than the normal material used and can serve its purpose just as well. This is because the plastic wrapping is also waterproof, lightweight and durable, just like what the nylon is like. Therefore, the plastic wrapping proves to be a great substitution for nylon. Our group used those small velcro circles to be able to stick the umbrella to a person’s bag. We feel that this is an ingenious way as we would be able to stick the umbrella to the bag. The frame of the old umbrella that we used was quite worn out and so there were many rusted parts and so it was quite dangerous to use as the rusted parts could have caused harm to the person who was using it. However, as our choices were little, we had to go to our last resort which was using the rusted old umbrella frame. The metal tape we used to stick the umbrella frames together is very sturdy and strong, which would be able to keep the umbrella all in place and prevent the pieces from falling apart, which would be disastrous.

Proposals and Recommendations

I hope that the product that our group made would be able to benefit the society one way or another. We feel that we should be contributing to the society that has contributed so much to our lives, so we need to give something back. We hope that a company would be able to help to further improve our product into an umbrella that would be really useful to the society. We would also like to warn people who are using our product that there were no safety tests done for the product and there could be some safety hazards like the umbrella frame as it is very old and thus it is rusted. This could cause hurt to the person who is carrying it by cutting that person. Thus, we would like to recommend that our umbrella should be used with caution, following these steps:

1. Carefully take out the umbrella from the bag
2. Slowly open the umbrella, making sure that all parts of the umbrella are safely connected to each other.
3. Use the velcro circles and stick them on your two shoulders
4. Make sure that the velcro circles are secure so that the umbrella would not fall off once you start walking.
5. Use the product with care! Be careful not to swing the umbrella around in case you hit other people with it.
6. Once you finish using the umbrella, close up the umbrella.
7. Give the umbrella a good shake so that the water that is caught in it would be shaken down properly
8. Keep it back into your bag and repeat these few steps again when using it the next time it is raining.

We have chosen this few steps as after we had tested the umbrella during our dry run, one of our group members had suffered some cuts on him, it must be due to the protruding galvanized wire that we did not cover properly. We have now learned our lesson and now we have twisted it many times and make it shorter so that in future, it would not cause harm to anyone. However, we still need to play it safe, so we are warning the people who are using our product just in case they might get poked and cut by the wire. We also would like to elaborate that the velcro circles are not that stable still and that we need to work on improving the umbrella so that it would not keep on falling of the person’s body. Moreover, the tape might wear out after continuos usage of the umbrella during rain, as the tape might loose its stickiness. We do not really know about this as we have not fully tested out our product, but after our first dry run, the tape still seemed alright. In addition, we would not like to recommend that our umbrella should be used for blocking the sun, as the material that we used, plastic wrapping, is translucent and thus is not suitable for blocking the sun’s rays. As you can see from what we have just said, our product still has a lot of problems. This is because what we have created is still new, and thus many problems would surface. We still need the teacher’s advice and many other improvements and modifications before this umbrella would be a success. However, we still hope that it would be meaningful and our umbrella would be able to be accepted by the society. We are able to fulfill our requirements but this is just the beginning, as the product is still quite unstable and lots of improvements need to be made.

The Progress

After much discussion, we have decided to use the following materials: Galvanized wire, fluorescent tube and some plastic wrapping. The plastic wrapping was used to act as the covering of the umbrella. We also used the frame of an old umbrella that we have dismantled so that the umbrella could be bigger. We also used a metal tape to stick the many pieces of the frame together so that it would not fall apart. So one day during the June holidays we met up and started to assemble the different parts together to form the bag umbrella. We used the following parts: The one on the top left are the umbrella frames used from an old wire. The Popular bag contains the plastic wrapping that would be used in the construction of the umbrella, where it would be the main covering of the umbrella. The small velcro circles are used to attach the umbrella to the bag. Below it, there is the tape that we use to stick the metal frames together, as seen on the umbrella frames above. We also used them to stick the plastic wrapping to the metal frames. Next to it, the baton holds the coiled galvanized wire, which is also used to tie the umbrella frames and the plastic wrapping together. Finally, the strap next to it is used as a carrier when the umbrella is folded up. So after three hours, we managed to finish building it.

As you can see from this pictures, we used three of the umbrella frames to prop up the plastic wrapping. The tape can be seen everywhere to stick the many pieces together. If you look carefully, you can see the velcro attached to the sides of the umbrella. This is used to attach the umbrella to the bag. The umbrella looks like the pram covering, but instead, the shape is used twice and is big enough to protect the person and the bag. However, it is not low enough to properly protect the bag. As this was our first prototype, it had many flaws. The plastic wrapping had many holes around it as we did not properly secure it. The umbrella was also a bit crooked as there was not enough plastic wrapping and so it was tilted to one side. There were also few wires that were jutting out. This was very dangerous as the wires could prick the person who is carrying it and thus cause pain and discomfort to him. We then did our first test of our product. We went to a car-park and brought a bucket of water, which we filled up with two ‘Super Soakers’, and then started spraying our team member, Clinton. He was carrying the bag umbrella and we started to spray water on him. However, our test was not really successful. Clinton was drenched, which must be due to the many holes in the umbrella. Even so, only the lower part of the bag and Clinton was wet, which was a good thing. This means that the umbrella has served part of its purpose, which was to protect the person and the bag. We still need to improve on patching up the holes that we made while we were constructing the umbrella. Also, we need to increase the length of the umbrella so that it can cover up the whole person. The umbrella needs to have more support so that it would not tilt towards one side and topple over. Moreover, the umbrella is not able to properly fold up as we planned it to happen. Also, when the umbrella was folded up, it was quite big and so it would be unable to fit into the bag. So, this would be very inconvenient for the person especially after using the umbrella when it is raining and can only put the umbrella into his bag, he is unable to do so as the umbrella is wet and also would not be able to fit into his bag. This contradicts the purpose of using our bag umbrella so improvements need to be made to make the bag umbrella better. We now have many points to think of improving our product. Thus, many improvements had to be made for the umbrella to meet our requirements so that it would be more successful.

The Background Of Our Product

The idea has occurred to us that we should try and contribute to the society. Thus, because we ourselves have been experiencing this problem, creating this project would be a win-win situation as we would both help ourselves and also contribute to the society. So our group went on to discuss about how to make this umbrella a success. Our main objective was to make the umbrella able to protect both the person carrying it and also the person’s bag that he is carrying. We also want it to be waterproof so that when it stops raining, it would not be so troublesome for the person to keep the umbrella into his bag as it would not be so wet. With all that in mind, our group now faced the problem of finding the right materials to make the umbrella. We had a tight budget of $40, with everyone of our group members contributing $10 each. Thus cheap, durable, sturdy and useful materials had to be used to make this umbrella. So our group met at a hardware shop one day to discuss the best possible materials to use. We had to rack our brains to look for something that is cheap yet useful for us in making the umbrella bag. After searching around the shop, we found the materials that we needed.

Introduction On Our Product

After conducting a survey with mainly positive results, many people have been facing this problem in their daily lives: Every time when it is raining, people find it hard to carry an umbrella around especially when it is raining. They feel that it is troublesome to keep a wet umbrella into their bags. Also, the umbrella might not be able to cover everything that they are carrying, especially their haversack which they would carry on their backs. Thus, what they want is something that is small and portable, which they do not mind paying for. So we came up with the following conditions to make the umbrella that would solve the problem:

1. The umbrella must be waterproof.
2. The umbrella must be light and portable so that carrying it would be easier.
3. The umbrella must be waterproof to prevent water from dripping on the person.
4. The umbrella must be big enough to be able to protect the person and the bag that he is carrying.

We had to choose carefully the design that we wanted to use as most of the designs that we created did not match all of the requirements that we had set up. So we had to create something that matches the requirements, yet is nice to see and people would enjoy having one with them. We had to overcome this challenge to properly complete our project and to make it popular with people so that they would be able to use it.

Abstract Of Our Report

In this report, we plan to let the audience know exactly what is our project all about, which is the ‘Bag Umbrella’. We were motivated by our team member, while we were brainstorming for ideas. He came up with a problem that he has been experiencing and thus shared it with us: people should have more convenient umbrellas that do not keep so much of the water that they trap and also big enough to protect even the bag that the person is carrying. So we came up with a prototype which we want to present to the panel of judges. After much experimentation, we have found the best materials to use for our product and we have come up with a waterproof umbrella that is able to protect the bag the person is carrying. Thus, all of our hard work has paid off as we have created a ‘Bag Umbrella’, which has been a really great learning experience for us. We hope that our product would, one way or another, help out the society in solving this problem. We have also learnt many values like teamwork and co-operation through this project and all of our team members have certainly grown closer together. Thus, after all the hard work we have produced, we present to you our product: the umbrella bag.