Week 4: Pairwise Decision Matrix

     After going back and revising our stakeholders, needs, specification and concept chart, our next step in the project was to complete the pairwise decision matrix. The pairwise decision matrix will give us a better understanding of which concept to go forward with for the project. Rather than relying on human feelings or opinions, we employed the quantitative analysis process to determine the working concept. On the first page of the excel sheet, we listed all the needs of each stakeholder and weighed them against each other as seen in figure 1. Each need was individually considered against every other need and judged to be less important, equally important or more important than the other. The purpose of this step is to find out which needs are more important and which are negligible.
    

Figure 1: Shows the pairwise weights

Next, the four concepts that we previously chose were judged individually in regards to each specification. A five star rating system was employed in this process with 5 being the best and 1 being the worst. The purpose of this step is to see which of the four concept is better suited to fit the needs that were weighed in the previous step. Figure 2 shows our concept ratings.

Figure 2:  Shows the concept ratings

Finally, the excel sheet tabulated the inputted data and calculated which concept is the most ideal for the needs and values given to each need. Figure 3 shows that the wind-powered ventilation concept was chosen by the matrix based again on quantitative factors.

 Figure 2: Result of the matrix

We are still in the broad conceptual phase of designing; nonetheless, figure 4 shows the basic idea of the system. In the simplest terms, wind will be used to push out smoke from inside the house to the outside. There are quite a bit of ways we can go from here, but that is left for later weeks. We really like this idea because it uses wind: a renewable form of energy. Add in the the fact that Bo Klua Village is situated in a mountainous, therefore windy region and we have a good recipe for success.

Figure 4: The basic idea of the win-powered ventilation system

     The design proposal was also worked on during week 4 and into week 5. The work was evenly distributed among the group members. Each member did his part well; however, we ran into some issues because of time constraints. We will allow ourselves more time to work on the final report in response this issue.