Application of Design Thinking to Improve User Experience at Home, A Case Study
Good Design starts with the understanding of psychology and technology. Communicating with the user is the most important thing in order to come up with good results. The Designer’s approach should be user-centric.
- Don Norman
Introduction:
As part of the UX-design mastery program conducted by Growth School the first exercise that was assigned to us was a Design-Thinking exercise. In this exercise we have assigned a part of the house such as a Bedroom, Kitchen, Dining Room, Living Room, Bathroom, to create an ideal experience around the area for the user.
The area of the house assigned to me was Bedroom. We have been divided into groups of 10 and all the group members were given a different area of the house. Out of the 10 group members we have to consider 5 of them as our sample user for this Design-Thinking Study.
In this exercise I have to find out what experience my users have with their bedroom. I have to find out their likes and dislikes about their bedroom and accordingly come up with a solution using Design-Thinking.
What is Design Thinking?
There exist many definitions for Design-Thinking but what I have learned is that Design-Thinking is the process in which you identify your user’s problem by communicating with them and thus design a solution to improve the experience of users. Good communication is very important here. The meaning of good communication here, is the in-depth conversation with the user to identify the challenges they are facing within the problem space.
As we moved ahead with the exercise I picked up Bedroom as my problem space and walked over 5 stages of Design thinking.
Empathize Stage
In this stage you have to first decide whom you want to interview i.e decide the users(in this case other group members). Connect with your user in a way that you understand their problem. Most of the time users themselves are not able to tell you what difficulties they are facing.
Things to remember:
You are not a user: Don’t act like a user. It is very important to UNLEARN and LEARN this simple yet significant mindset. In this stage YOU have to understand user’ perspective.
Questions are very important: While interviewing your user, frame your questions in such a way that they are conversational. Avoid directly asking what problems your users have. Your users will not tell you what problems they have because they don’t even realise that they have problems. It is our responsibility to understand their problems from the conversation.
Documentation: Making proper notes at this stage will ease out next stages.
Here are some of the questions that I asked my users.
- What is the Size of your bedroom?
- Do you share your room with any of your family members?If yes then how do you both organize your stuff?
- What is the shape of your room?Does there exist any space which you think is wasted?
- Is your workplace and bedroom the same?If yes then how do you manage if you have to work late nights?Don’t you get bored of spending your whole day in the same room?
- How do you get fresh air in your room? How many windows do you have? How is the ventilation in your room?Is there any mosquito attack if the window is open?
- How many plug points do you have in your room?Do switches in your room are located at the correct places?
- What furniture do you have in your room?
- Where do you keep stuff like water bottles, phone, specs during night time?
- Do you have ample amounts of daylight?
- How do you prefer sleeping, with your lights on or lights off or in a dim light?
- Is there any place in your room where you can keep stuff which you want very handy?
- Do you have a dressing unit in your bedroom?
- Could you tell me what you like and dislike about your room?
- What do you wish to be different about the room?
Key Insights from the users:
Define Stage
Based on insights from the user interviews I worked on defining problems statements.
Things to remember:
Do a thorough categorization of all the problems from all the users to reduce the redundancy.
Just focus on the problem, do not start thinking about the solution.
After categorizing the problems, below are the few problem statements which I have identified:
- Many of the users feel that the bedrooms are very congested due to the furniture and block flawless movement.
- Some users face challenges with dust coming from openings of their. bedroom and maintaining frequent cleanliness.
- Users have problems organizing their clothes, accessories, and keeping things of interest with the existing storage.
- For some users the light distribution in the room is not ideal as per the needs and time of a day.
Why are each of those problems important to users?
- Congested space does not allow to make desired changes in the room as well as affects the circulation of an individual.
- Users do not have time to do deep cleaning on a daily basis. Also dust coming inside is not good for gadgets and health
- Organized room improves productivity, ease of access and saves time for users, moreover it improves the overall presentation of the room.
- .Incorrect lightning affects the health and mood of an individual.
Ideate Stage
After defining all the problem statements this is the stage where I need to focus on solutions. You get to solutioning only NOW, after you understand what the problems are.
For this, we were introduced to a technique called ‘CRAZY 8’. Following this technique I have to come up with 8 ideas in 8 minutes for every problem I identified in the previous stage. Better to use a stopwatch at this stage.
Here are some of the ideas that I came up with:
Things to Remember:
Don’t try to be perfect.
Don’t be afraid of writing whatever crazy ideas come to your mind.
Now I have to choose Top 3 ideas from all the ideas that I came up with. Here are the Top 3 ideas that I chose.
- Adding wardrobe organizers: Using, one can create sections for every variety of things they have in the wardrobe which makes it easy to access.
- Use of Foldable Furniture: To optimize space while working from home. It will give better utilisation of space and even a small room can feel spacious. Also by using this idea a variety of arrangements in room is possible.
- Smart Lightning: Room with smart lightning to optimise for timely needs. Smart lights helps to reduce power consumption, good for eye health and also one can smartly control the lights in the room.
Prototype Stage
Finally, in this stage we will make a representational model of the solution we came up with.
I have to select One Idea out of the 3 best ideas that I chose in the ideate stage and make prototype of that one finally selected idea.
Things to remember:
DON’T spend too much time in prototyping. Prototype your idea with anything available sketch, paper, clay, unused items etc.
DON’T spend too much money. If possible don’t spend any money for this.
Room with foldable furniture arranged to optimize for space while working from home.
To illustrate the idea, I have a prototype of a 100 sq ft bedroom with foldable furniture arrangements. I have used a convertible sofa bed and a foldable table in this room.
Here are some images demonstrating ; a folding table; a congested room without foldable furniture; working hour & non-working hour setup of bedroom with foldable furniture.
This is a 6 sq ft folding table with a fixed ledge of 1.5 sq ft. In case you are a desktop user, this can be used with a wall mounted monitor. The CPU and the keyboard can be placed on the fixed ledge while non-working hours keeping the table folded.
For this bedroom we observed that,
After the use of foldable furniture we could make more space even in a small bedroom of 100 sq ft. During working hours free space increased by 20% and during non-working hours free space increased by 4.5% approximately from the pre-existing state of a congested room.
Testing Stage
This is the stage where I took feedback from the users by presenting them my solution.
What went well/What is good about the idea?
- Everyone liked the idea and the concept of using foldable furniture and found it innovative.
- Usage of a fixed ledge along side a folding table helps in keeping necessary equipments properly placed.
- Use of foldable mechanism is one of the possible practical solution.
- Good circulation area created with the use of foldable furniture.
What can be improved?/Suggestions
- Drawer with the fixed part of the table would be a good option to use as storage.
- Might be a little costly.
- Will need re-organisation and provisioning for loosely kept things after the use of a foldable table and bed. (Keeping wallet, stationary, keys, even blankets)
Conclusion:This was my first ever Design-Thinking Project. It was an awesome experience to unlearn and learn new things.
I learned to..
- Understand the behaviour of the user and empathize with their problems in favour of improving their experience.
2. Find the root cause of the problem i.e understand the reasoning behind the existence of the problem and try to resolve it from there instead of imposing a solution.
3. Design for users i.e always focus on solving pain points for users and make your design satisfying for users and deliver usability.
4.Not over complicate the solution or try to combine multiple ideas.
Getting familiar and learning design thinking with a non text-book approach was really interesting, looking forward to learn more on Design and User research.
Video Link to the Case Study:
