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1Research:My team and I collaborated on Miro to brainstorm a variety of topics relating to our audience and of dishwashers in general. We created a persona to help us identify the top challenges that our audience faces while doing dishes, as well as determining several possible solutions for those challenges. Since all three of us have never used a dishwasher, we took extra care to understand the steps of using one. My group focused on Beverly, a writer who works from home in her mid 30s, who is wheelchair bound without any smart home devices and lives alone. This persona was a great gateway into pinpointing the most important things she would need for a dishwasher to be assessible and simple to use.
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2Ideation:
This phase included lots of sketches between the three of us. We played the opposites game, which helped us compare two opposite ideas against eachother ( ex. an ingterface which primarily uses light vs. one that primarily uses sound). Even though everything shown here is rough, it gave us a good idea of what direction to start heading in. We started thinking heavily about a detatachable interface that Beverly can conveniently use anywhere in her home. We wanted to incorporate mainly light as opposed to sound, as to not disturb Beverly. With light, it can capture creative ways to display intervals of the dishwasher’s progress, while sound can possibly get too repetitive, obnoxious, and disruptive.
3Lo-Fi Prototyping: The next step for my team involved putting ourselves in the perspective of someone wheelchair bound actually using a dishwasher. It’s one thing to watch a video and talk about it, but it’s another to actually experience it, so we could further make educated decisions. We simulated this expereience with a real wheelchair and a cardboard prototype of a dishwasher. Edem went on to 3D print a physical mockup of a detachable interface (which we named the Beacon), so we could test how it would feel in real time.
4Decisions: Midea asked for 2 different concepts per team. Our group was excited to present the detachable interface, but we also came up with a mobile experience with a minimal interface. With this experience it incorporates simplicity through usage of color + light with a strong ai presence to make washing dishes as easy and pleasant as possible. Valmira and I worked to build out the mockups for this idea, whereas Edem primarily built out the mockups for the detachable interface. Since the Beacon idea was already similiar to a mobile phone, we knew before we actually knew what concept Midea would like more. With that being said, we went on to develop the Beacon based off Midea’s pleased feedback.
5Final Concept: Here are some highlights of the keynote presentation shown to Midea. Our team was highly sucessful and Midea chose our idea out of all 4 other groups to possibly develop. This project taught me how to work with actual clients and take their feedback to build out an idea that’s best suited for the client.