100 Ways to Kill A Cockroach

I will never get the idea why cockroaches exist in our world.

I mean, I even completed the whole text for this entry before posting the picture above because I would be too afraid they'll come to life and crawl out of the screen.

Cockroaches are my ultimate fear. But yet weirdly, they disgust me so much at the same time. They're unlike other scary things: ghosts, great heights, dark magic, clowns, spiders. They are neither spooky or serious at all. They're just those little unflattering brown creatures with fat bodies and tiny, tiny legs and sometimes wings to intimidate even more.

Ewwwwwwwwww.

Yet still,  they scare me to death.

Not only me, but they also bring troubles and drive a lot of other people crazy. Cockroaches spread diseases and germs, pollute food with droppings, damage things such as cloth and paper by chewing, and do harms to agriculture as a pest.

This is only the positive thing I found related to cockroach:

The "Oggy and the Cockroaches" Cartoon

Other than that, n o t h i n g. 

Nothing. 

Truly.

And that's why my group mates and I chose the topic on ways to kill cockroaches during the latest Creative Thinking class. We did three papers as instructed, and these are the outcome:

FIRST

For the first attempt, our group decided to just come up with random ideas and sketch them out on the paper as fast as we could. We did not realize what we did was quite messy using this method, because the ideas were scattered all over the paper. We tend to use more of doodling and graphics than text, causing us to be not effective in using the time. Considering this is the warm up session, I think it was normal that we had difficulty in gathering the ideas. But overall, it visually looks quite good due to the harmonious colors we applied. 

No. of ideas gathered: 16

Pros: 

*Visually pleasing (good use of color)

Cons:

*Too much time spent focusing on drawing, causing

*Very few ideas on "Ways To Kill" (the main objective)

*Messy (hard to navigate viewers' eyes to focus)

*There isn't any title

SECOND

For the second attempt, we did quick reflection on how we could do better than the first one. We tried the mind mapping method, where we divided the paper into 4 categories of tools/ things/ objects that can be used in killing roaches and quickly filling them in. We also did division of work where each member worked more into one sub branch, though we were opened to discussion of ideas as well. Using categorization, we could gather more ideas in less time because we know the sections, and only had to find the ideas within them.

No. of ideas gathered: 26

Pros:
*It looks neater
*We can see the focus
*Effective use of color
*More ideas gathered

Cons:
*The use of space (not enough ideas yet we almost fully occupy the whole mahjong paper)
*Probably still too visual
*Still too few ideas

 THIRD

We realized that the first 2 papers had something in common that we should get rid off: they have too little ideas to meet the requirement. So we tried to be more effective in gathering the ideas, and one of the ways is to keep track on how many we have done, so we wouldn't lose count and the work would appear neater. In this paper, it was achieved by using:

1. Numbers 

2. Lists

3. Branches

And we tried to balance out the amount of text and doodles used so we could communicate our ideas faster; thus achieving much more ideas. We also did the drawings quicker. We kept the branching idea (mind mapping) because we believed it is a good way to do brainstorming effectively.

No. of ideas gathered: >60

CONCLUSION

In my opinion, our group has developed a lot through the process of doing this project. The last paper was the best among others in term of the number of ideas gathered, as well as its presentation. We tried hard to work with the time, too. At the end we haven't completed the work because we ran out of ideas. But we have done our best and the progress is quite compelling.



WAYS TO KILL A COCKROACH could be your handy guide to... kill any cockroach you will ever encounter no matter where you are. Although I'm disappointed to find out they aren't likely to ever extinct [I mean, they can eat everything! Quoted from my friend, they even eat shit], we can always kill them because human is a lot more powerful than cockroaches. And I hope this guide will give you a boost of self- esteem.

It totally does me a favor, personally.

Bye!