Chris Schnaars
A Design Research Sampler
Contact: schnaarschris@gmail.com 610-248-1433 www.chrisschnaars.com 330 W.15th Street New York, NY 10011
Hello. My name is Chris Schnaars, and I am a design researcher and explorer of the unknown. I believe that design has the power to make both people and businesses happier. My introduction to design research took place in 2006, before I even knew terms like “design thinking” or “human-centered” even existed. I was an ex-hedge fund analyst who leveraged an ability to creatively solve problems into a job creating educational
products for schools around the world. A newcomer to design, I was initially interested in creating “cool stuff”. As I started visiting schools and speaking with teachers and students, I realized what interested me wasn’t the stuff—it was the people.
This interest evolved into a full-fledged passion, and led to my enrollment in the MSc in Design Ethnography program at The University of Dundee, in Scotland. This was the ultimate immersive experience: I explored the methodological side of design
research, participated in dozens of real world projects, and discussed design with
industry leaders. Additionally, I taught first-year students about design research and spoke at the university’s first-ever Sustainable Design Forum.
Since finishing the program, I’ve put my abilities to good use by volunteering with
Project H Design and consulting for Wireless Generation. For both organizations, I am part of teams creating educational experiences that make learning more engaging, fun, and collaborative.
I believe that the skills I’ve developed over the last four years make me unique. I
have a deep understanding of using design research to inform and inspire design solutions, as well as a knack for envisioning the nonexistent, telling a gripping
story, and quickly prototyping an idea. Also, I can frame design solutions in terms of business viability, ensuring that they stimulate innovation and drive results.
I am currently searching for a position where my research and visualization abilities can help organizations create meaningful design solutions. If you need somebody
who has an optimistic mindset, enjoys being part of diverse teams solving undefined
problems, and has a desire to contribute to the design community at large, please be in touch
Cheers, Chris Schnaars
What’s Inside... This document has been put together to give you, the reader, a glimpse at some of
the work I have done, and (I think) more importantly, how I have done it. It covers a total of four projects: two that I give an in-depth description of, and two that I cover only briefly.
Of course, I have completed none of this work individually. Over the course of my lifetime, I have been extremely fortunate to work with some of the most brilliant, creative, awe-inspiring personalities that I imagine exist on this planet.
Finally, thank you for reading. I know how busy life can get, so I sincerely appreciate you taking the time.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
The Bicycle is Beautiful My graduate thesis led me from Scotland to New York City to explore a passion of mine—riding a bicycle in urban areas. For an entire summer, I observed the streets of New York, talked to dozens of “street users”, and recorded thoughts from my own bike in order to explore one big question: how can we get more people to use a bicycle for transport? The result was a framework of design opportunities that provide urban areas with an actionable plan for implementing solutions to increase bicycle use. To bring some of these solutions to life, I created a series of scenarios depicting ideas in action. Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
The first phase of the project was dedicated to exploratory research—collecting data through immersion, interviews, situation analysis, and quantitative research. Street Obsrvations & Autoethnography u The first month of the project was spent on the streets of NYC understanding the interaction dynamics that take place between transportation modes—both as an observer and a cyclist. I focused on a section of Manhattan that has received the bulk of new cycling infrastructure, but still doesn’t offer a cohesive system. The mixture of street types led to a deep understanding of how attitudes and behaviors shift on a street to street basis.
Interviews u I gained insight into the aspirations and values of as many different “street stakeholders” as I could: cyclists, pedestrians, cab drivers, bus drivers, and bike messengers.
t Situation
Analysis My observations gave me a sense of what works well for cyclists in NYC, and what can pose a problem for new and untrained riders. Seeking to evaluate these situations with non-cyclists, I created a set of “Street Scenario Cards”. With these cards, I was able to sit down with non-cyclists and gain insight into their reactions and perceptions of each street scenario.
t Quantitative
& Other Research I supplemented my research with two surveys, one for cyclists one for non-cyclists, to gain a more statistical understanding of the prevailing attitudes of each camp. I also engaged a wider-community of cyclists through a project blog, website, and Flickr account. Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
The synthesis process transformed the collected data into a group of themes, and ultimately, a framework that visualized the insights of the research. t Analysis
I had been conducting “mini-synthesis” sessions throughout the fieldwork process—pulling themes from notes, images, stories, and secondary research. During the intensive, post-reseach, synthesis phase, I transformed this analysis into a series of affinity diagrams and high-level themes. During this process, I also retold many of the stories I heard during research, making sure that the meaning of each had not been lost in analysis. This process produced three distinct results: a map of current attitudes based on street type and cyclist volume, a framework of design opportunities, and a series of urban mindset shifts.
t Mapping
Attitudes As a result of the varying degrees of bicycle accommodations, and cyclist volume, on the streets of NYC, there is a wide variety of attitudes that exist towards integrating bicycle infrastructure in an already congested street environment. This grid symbolizes how the attitudes map back to certain streets. What it demonstrates is that if streets are well planned (for cyclists) and well used (by cyclists), other members of the street community will be accepting of the changes. If streets are void of accommodations, or have accomodations yet no cyclists, tolerance levels drop dramatically.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
A framework a three design opportunities resulted from the synthesis process: Cities need to build accommodations for cyclists, create awareness of that cycling is supported and equal mode of transportation, and educate the public about street safety, and make sure the rules are enforced.
Build Accommodations represents where bicycles live, ride, and park. If the city’s streets are not built for bicycles as much as cars and pedestrians, the chances of increasing ridership is minimal.
Create Awareness represents everything that the public sees and hears regarding cycling. It is one thing to build accommodations, but you also have to spread the word that cycling is a safe, viable, realistic mode of transportation suitable for everybody.
Educate & Enforce represents the efforts to ensure that reasonable safety rules are established, taught to citizens, and enforced.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
The framework gave structure to concept generation, where I (and some of the more enthusiastic project participants) brainstormed hundreds of design solutions. Without the means to actually prototype and test ideas in the streets of NYC, I visualized some of the most inspirational—and feasible— solutions with storyboards.
p Solution
Scenarios Scenarios were created to illustrate the design solutions in action, as well as convey their “sketch” and “ready to be prototyped” state. Pictured above is one of four parts of the scenario within the “Educate and Enforce” design opportunity.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
In order to structure my findings as a guide for cities to utilize to increase cycling, I provided my insights in the form of actionable “What If...” questions. For each insight, I provided a set of three ideas (some existing, some new), some existing programs, and a quote or two from the research.
p “What
If...” Insights My findings could only be utilized as a guide for cities if it was both actionable and able to be adapted. The “What if...” questions can act as a guide for creating effective solutions, and the sample ideas are a good start for concept generation.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
Redesigning the Alarm Clock With the consequences of user error being potentially disastrous, it’s a wonder that most alarm clocks are designed so poorly. Either you hit “alarm off” instead of “snooze”, mistake the PM indicator for AM, or unsuccessfully try to use the alarm in the dark or when half-asleep. In early 2009, I was part of a group of four students determined to design an alarm clock that actually considered the user in its design, and put an end to alarm clock mishaps. Getting out of bed is still be the responsibility of the individual. Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
Since each team member had encountered alarm clock usability problems, we started our process of with an evaluation of our personal alarm devices. We also researched what has been done in the field of alarm clock design. t Analyzing Our Alarms To get things started, we all conducted a simple “Good and Bad” analysis of our personal alarm clocks. We made sure to also include sketches that captured the shape and placement of important features. This analysis quickly identified a few themes for alarm clock interaction problems that we would keep in mind as we conducted our primary research.
Competitive Research u Our team looked into existing work in alarm clock design, identifying certain trends and gimmicks. Many of the clocks had been designed with a focus on getting somebody out of bed, instead of ensuring the clock was used correctly. Two extreme examples are shown here. “Clocky”, the clock with wheels, runs around the room when the alarm goes off, forcing its owner to get out of bed and chase it around. The “Wake N’ Bacon” wakes its owner up to the sound and smell of cooking bacon.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
After our preliminary research, we conducted contextual inquiries of eight graduate students—our target audience—to understand their alarm clock experiences. We also conducted a task analysis session, where our participants were observed using an unfamiliar alarm device. Contextual Inquiry u Speaking with participant’s in their bedroom gave us a deep understanding of their alarm clock experiences, and how those experiences ended up shaping their mornings. They took us through their daily and nightly alarm routines, explained the interaction problems they had encountered, and the “fixes” each had developed to overcome poor alarm design. During our visits, we also probed deeper into the desired experiences that our participants wanted in an alarm experience, as well as for their nights and mornings. Even though our market was graduate students, we had still hoped to speak with some extreme users (frequent fliers, hearding impaired) of alarm devices. Unfortunately, access issues forced us to shelve the idea.
t Task
Analysis We invited our participants to take part in a session where they would use unfamiliar alarm clocks. This analysis gave us an idea of the intuitiveness of different alarm designs, as well as our participants’ conceptual models. Pictured to the left is a sketch of one of the alarms used in the analysis. Before conducting the activity, we asked our participants to glance at the alarms and illustrate what they thought the features and displays of the alarm did. Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
We were interested in finding out what our participants thought an “ideal alarm clock” would look like, so we held userprototyping sessions using two materials: Play-Doh and paper. t Play-Doh This method allowed users to determine the look and feel of an ideal alarm device, and gave our team insight to our users’ tangible priorities. At the end of the process, we noticed that our participants had often ommitted key features from their designs (an alarm on/off switch was a repeat offender).
Paper Prototyping u Those who weren’t involved in the PlayDoh prototyping session were given a kit of paper alarm clock elements (various faces, button sizes, etc.) that they had to place on a standard “box” alarm design. This approach gave us insight into the user’s priority for functionality, placement, and overall experience. The combination of the two prototyping methods gave us an interesting cross-section of results, and we started calling this approach the “Blinders” approach. Essentially, the idea of “Blinders” is to focus a prototyping session on one facet of design in order to isolate a user’s thinking.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
Throughout the research process, the things we had seen and stories we heard had been inspiring us to envision new solutions. The synthesis phase gave us a chance to narrow down our ideas to one design solution. Scenarios u In order to visualize the complete experience of our design concepts, we created sets of “Before and After” scenarios, each based on the stories that we heard during the fieldwork. “Before” scenarios involved the user’s existing device; “After” scenarios used our design.
t Prototyping As a brainstorming exercise, we conducted “group sketching” where we would each get a turn adding or adjusting features on a massive whiteboard sketch. This made our brainstorm more tangible, and allowed us to visualize the physical aspects of our features.
Our first prototype was based entirely off tone of our group sketches. We kept it simple, small, and easy to use when half-asleep in the dark. We also created replaceable clock faces that represented the different states of use. This let the users who tested our design to focus on the interactions instead of the fact that it was a cardboard model. Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
Our final design was a simple, compact, alarm device that addressed each of the key themes that we had extracted from our research: it provided visible and physical feedback, had buttons and dials that could be identified in the dark, could be set quickly and correctly, and had an easy-to-find snooze button. Snooze Button u The snooze button on the top of the clock is big and provides a good physical response when pushed. q
Hybrid Clock Face The clock’s LCD screen displays an analog face, yet a digital overlay appears when setting the time or alarm—giving the user confidence that the clock is set correctly. A third hand, indicating the alarm time, appears when the alarm is turned on. Alarm/Time Set Dial q Say goodbye to tirelessly pushing the hour and minute buttons on your clock: the scroll wheels allow for fast setting. Not to worry, the wheels have to be pushed in to change the alarm/set time, so you won’t accidentally do so when reaching for the snooze.
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
Two Quick Project Samples For the sake of brevity, I won’t describe every project I’ve been involved in. There are, however, two projects that I would be remiss to omit. The first was an exercise in understanding extreme users— in this case, people with speech disabilities. This project is extremely special to me, due to both the challenging nature and the people I met during research. The second was a one-day challenge to reinvent the yogurt experience. Not the most serious topic, but a perfect example of the power of design thinking to produce innovative solutions. Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
In the spring of 2009, three teams of design researchers were given the task of exploring the future of speech technology by developing a deep understanding of its extreme users. My team visited a local care facility for folks with severe speech disabilities in what was one of the most challenging and inspiring research assignments of my career. t Comparing Alternative Augmentative Communication (AAC) Devices During our fieldwork we communicated with folks using a variety of AAC devices. The choice cards (top) involved no verbal communication, and relied on the user’s ability to use gestures to choose between options. The talker (below) gave the user a wide range of pre-loaded expressions, but took a long time to use
q
“I’m Married” This one quote stuck with us throughout the project. While talking to one gentleman, he said “I’m married” through his device. Since he was unable to add any sort of emotion or personal tone, it was received as a fact instead of a story. The Context of Communication During our reearch, I participated in group band practice, probably my favorite fieldwork memory to date. At one point, a gentleman signaled me to play the harmonica, simply by gesture—a standard practice when playing live music. In this context, communicating through body language didn’t signify a disability, but an expected form of communication.
q
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
On the first day of our Master’s program, when we were still nervous and didn’t know what to expect, we were given a daylong task to “reinvent the yogurt experience”. Although awkward at first, this was a perfect start to a program dedicated to design thinking. Right u After brainstorming hundreds of design concepts, we voted as a group on the ones that we would prototype. Prototyping q As a life-long Lego and DIY enthusiast, I have always jumped at the chance to build an idea. Luckily, design is a career path that embraces this love. The Yoguzi q Our concept was to combine snacktime and playtime, inventing a new niche in the snackfood market. Our reasoning: if kids are willing to shoot paint at one another, why not yogurt?
Chris Schnaars: A Design Research Sampler
You Made It!
Do you want more? Visit: www.chrisschnaars.com
Contact: schnaarschris@gmail.com 610-248-1433 www.chrisschnaars.com 330 W.15th Street New York, NY 10011