I mean, they were told to put the solar panels inside the material of the garment but when delivered, it was completely the opposite.

Absolutely crazy.

If you put the solar panels inside the material is unlikely they would function correctly. Solar panels work best when they have unhindered access to light.

It might have looked better if there were bits of fabric that you could clip over the solar panels to make them less obvious when they weren't in use. But yeah, the women were asking them to make a somthing quite complex in only around 12 hours or so, compromises were going to have to be made somewhere.

Thanks guys, but weren't the girls notified beforehand the problems re. the solar panels?

They thought of the issue but not when they had the person there to ask.

There's a real question if you could hide it from use when not needed. What needed to penetrate to it needed to be asked - as that would dictate what you might have covered it with.

There's a real issue whats available, and whether it was available to those designers. There was a newspaper article a few days ago about small, thin solar scales that could be put onto anything looking like what was around them - which provided power and didn't look like traditional panels. If that was available , and they had somehow known of it, they could have produced a saleable version.

Indeed, I imagine thats where the big money would be - using new technology to do whats not been possible before . The trick is to get there first, and, if they had been talking to the right designer ,they might have managed to do that. If the designer wasn't aware, and didn't suggest other options, they clearly had no knowledge of the field to ask the questions that might have got them to a better solution.

I don't know what exactly the girls said in their brief to the designer but I was definitely expecting something a lot nicer than the end product. That being said whoever put it together didn't have a great deal of time to do so. I think the girls should have just gone with the phone charger idea, that would have been a lot more practical and appealed to much more people, business women in particular. They were just lucky that the boys idea was much worse.

It's generally quite obvious that solar panels have to go on the outside of things.

If the girls focused on one idea they could probably have come up with a design to make them less obvious or less ugly.

This is the problem with having too many features. Less time to make any one feature look nice and work well.

The solar panels should have been clip on/clip off epaulettes. They could then have been left on a windowsill to charge while your jacket was in your dark wardrobe (something they didn't seem to consider) plus they could have sold the idea as being a whole range of clothes where you only have the expense of the solar panels once and could transfer them from item to item as trends changed.

Where I saw a problem is that you'd want a jacket like that on a cold and gloomy day, and there would be no sun to set off the solar panels. On a sunny day, don't you run the risk of getting too warm with the panels setting off heat all the time?

The phone charger was a great idea.

The idea of putting the solar panels underneath the material would be an impossible brief to fulfil. They simply wouldn't work if they did that which would defeat the object.

I think what I'm trying to get at is, why the designers didn't let the girls know that the solar panels would have to go on the outside.

The reason why they were so shocked when they saw it for the first time.

I would have thought that was obvious to anyone. Solar panels must have access to the sun so the panels have to be visible.

The problem was in the style and design of the jacket. it was too formal. If they had gone for a sports or casual jacket then having a bold stripe on it wouldn't have been so distracting, and anyway few people wear the same formal jacket every day so you'd need the panels on a lot of your clothing to be of any practical daily use. The idea had potential but would have worked better for clothing designed for a specific use. A running jacket that can charge your phone would have been a far better idea.

Well, as Lord Sugar would probably say, I'd have thought it was bleedin' obvious that a solar panel has to be facing the sun to work! Even if the designers got a "the panels must be inside the jacket" memo, they'd probably have laughed and thrown it in the bin.

More seriously, I suspect the designers tried to use fabric coverings to make the solar panels less obtrusive, but found out that it impeded their ability to work too badly, hence why it was delivered late and with the panels on full display.

The solar panels were a ridiculous idea, as were those dreadful lapel lights.

So just to be clear: we've got ten people who are competing for an investment in their brilliant ideas of ten times the average wage, and not a single one of them is aware that solar panels only work if they're exposed to the sun? Is that a fair summary of where we are?

Just re-checked the episode, and Nurun told the design sub-team to place the panels under one layer of fabric, to which Katie and Lindsay (who were with her in the car) immediately told her that solar panels have to be directly exposed to the sun, but Nurun persisted with the idea of putting a presumably thin layer of fabric over the panels. I'm guessing the sub-team decided to just run with that, figuring that if they lost, they'd have a convenient thing to blame on Nurun.

Well, they (all ten of them) apparently didn't know the meaning of 'Decadence' either so it's a fair summary.

Although, Dave points out, at least two of them questioned the solar panels being able to work under material at some point so possibly it's a case of a few of them not wanting to stick their heads above the parapet so early in the game, and perhaps be able to use another as the blame for the task going wrong .

Either way, it doesn't say much for any of them TBH.

You lot speak like the whole thing isn't a total fix anyway.

Its not necessarily either or. My plants grow in a greenhouse with whitewashed glass. The team didn't ask what had to get though to do what they wanted (heat, light,at which frequencies) for how long, to do what. Or what would charge it - cloudy days, electric light, bright sunlight - 30 minutes, or 4 hours for a charge?

The second point would be a good way to go. But its not clear what they had available. You might also ask whether it would sell if you could only charge your phone in something you wore less often? Something that converted movement into electricity might be better?

Fair point.

I don't think it's that incredible. I know that solar panels have to be exposed to the sun, but I think it's reasonable to be a little unsure if they would work underneath a very thin layer of fabric (which was what was being suggested, no one thought they'd be right underneath all the fabric in the jacket). If I was on that team, I'd certainly question if it would work, but I wouldn't be absolutely 100% sure that it wouldn't if the covering was very thin. I'm not a scientist - I have some basic knowledge, but nothing that specific. I'd imagine it's the same with most people.

That's why you should ask someone who knows. Perhaps the Wearable Tech Expert....? We spend a lot of time training people to ask questions if they don't know something. It saves a lot of time later.

The problem is that a lot of people (including Apprentices) see asking questions as "weak". It's not. It's how you find stuff out.

Hmm, fair point. Maybe it just slipped their minds with all the pressure of other things, although not an excuse, I know.

To be fair, I think the contestants were sold down the river a little in this task. It was a very hard one.

Wearable technology is still in its infancy, and the most innovative designs are going to have access to complimentary technology simply not at the disposal of the designers on the Apprentice. No matter what the candidates did, I get the impression it would have come off rather goofy and inappropriate to the retailers they were trying to pitch to.

That said, the girls could have made their product better by removing a feature. The boys? Well, it wasn't a great idea - a phone camera does the job easier now. But they ran into exactly the problem I described with their initial T-Shirt idea - these things all sound like good concepts, but with the resource available to them never achievable.

It was a first prototype.
You then refine your prototype, surely, until you are happy with the product.

Also, I've never seen solar panels covered over?