The Evaluation mode was by far the most exciting and difficult. It not only tested our ideas and the product that we created, but us as well. I felt pretty prepared on Friday before walking into class. I thought I knew my groups product/idea and could convey that message to the other class and the EPs. This process, however, brought up questions that myself and my group had not thought about prior to that day.
The main question we were asked by most people was “why glass?”. They wanted to know why we picked glass as the material that would hold our pills, either in store or through the online ordering process. The only example I could come up with was to tell them about Bite Toothpaste, a company my group did a project on earlier in the semester. The premise of this company is that they make small bite sized tablets of toothpaste and send them via glass jars in the mail. Other than that, I’m not exactly why my group chose glass, and we never questioned our idea once we settled on it. We just thought “what’s a somewhat sturdy material that can be used multiple times and won’t have to go straight into the landfill” and from there declared glass our material.
In other words, my group would never have second guessed our decision to use glass bottles instead of plastic or aluminum if it wasn’t for the presentation on Friday. I learned how extremely important it is for our ideas to be looked at through other people eyes because they can catch small flaws and inconsistencies the four of us would have glanced over. They are also able to bring about good and sometimes probing questions that the creators of a product might not want to address because it would make for more work. This mode was extremely important because it allowed my group to see any flaws and decide if changes need to be made/what changes we will address before we submit our final project.