pressure cooker

The pressure cooker is a design sprint exercise used to kickstart the project. With limited time and resources, the designers are forced to switch to an active state of doing. Making quick scenarios and prototypes that help with grasping the complexity of the design case that force the designers to think in a practical way.

Designing for the organizing and synchronizing of activities in and around the house seemed like a pretty straightforward challenge, where new smart planning tools were designed to help the family with planning in the high-tech future. However, being forced to start creating raised a lot of questions. It showed that planning events within a family setting also has a lot of vagueness. It covers a wide spectrum from formally sending meeting requests for doing an activity together to casually asking a family member if they want to join for a walk. It is a dynamic social interaction that can be hard to grasp or quantify.

The limited time of the pressure cooker was used to explore the more traditional directions, close to what people already know as organizing and synchronizing activities often referred to as planning.

A discussion led to a first iteration of needs that the devices would need to adhere (See Appendix B). These included an indication of which family members were at home, the ability to synchronize personal calendars and inputting and editing tasks defined by the three parameters “time”, “person(s)”, and “priority”. Two scenarios were presented that sketch a scenario where the family tries to plan a movie night. One in the present and one demonstrating the possible use of a smart planning tool. The product would be situated in a central place in the home where users can post activities and show interest in participating. The idea behind the concept is to place and edit tasks on a circular dial. A functional tool on first sight, but this first iteration does not fully respect the human nature when it comes to planning. The family is forced to plan activities in a “black and white” way of planning. It removes vagueness and flexibility that allows the user to feel free. This vagueness and flexibility is something that should be preserved in a future where most products and systems only function with true and false. Next iterations therefore focused on the more ambiguous sides of organizing and synchronizing of activities.

Fig.2: Frame from storyboard