CHUCK DESIGN DIARY MINJAE KIM
ANNICE LEE
ARLEIGH PARR
PRISCILLA TSANG
01 Week of August 23rd
Group 4
IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM
FOOD WASTE
The first lecture was a great opportunity for us to understand about the concept of human-centric design methodologies and iterative design process. Moreover, while reading New York magazine article “The Uninhabitable Earth�, we discussed how wearable device can be designed to increase awareness of climate impact. After the discussion, our team decided to focus on the issue of food waste. Images Courtesy of Pinterest
02 Week of August 28th
IDEATION MIND MAP AND LITTLEBITS
MIND MAP
LittleBits
Threshold
Accelerometer
Wire
Vibration Motor
This week, we learned about Mindmap –one of the ideation strategies. Mindmap was useful for us in the initial phase of the ideation process because we could not only thoroughly illustrate the issue of food waste and its impact on climate change, but also clarify our food waste contribution. The Mindmap began with food waste and branched out into an entangled web of related challenges and solutions. As the end, we were able to get from “food waste” to “raise awareness”, “throw it away” and “new technology” –the key concepts of our product.
Then, we explored different types of littleBits that will be used in our product. We were fascinated by various types of inputs and outputs. Though it took some time to make our decision, we finally decided to use accelerometer as the input and vibration motor as the output. We also bought wire Bit to give more flexibility to our product and threshold to control the signal passing through a circuit.
03 Week of September 4th
IDEATION MOOD BOARD AND COLLAGE
MOOD BOARD (top) COLLAGE (bottom)
In Week 3, we learned more about the ideation strategies –Metaphor & Analogy, Moodboard, and Collage. Through these ideation strategies, we were able to further develop the concept of our product. The idea we had was to make a bracelet that can improve treatment of personal waste to prevent food waste from reaching landfills and ultimately contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Through mobile app, users can monitor and track their waste disposal habit easily. We took the characteristic of a rooster crowing in the morning and transformed this property into out design by making our bracelet vibrating to alert our users. Images used in our mood board helped us to get a sense of colors and schemes that could guide the next step for the design. In addition, by creating collage, we could make a useful reference for both function and style –sleek and modern design of a bracelet with neutral colors.
04 Week of September 11th
IDEATION STORY BOARD AND SCENARIO
We created storyboard and scenario during week 4. A story board and scenario were used to illustrate the intended interaction between a user and our product Chuck. As shown below, the intended user would dispose of his/her food scraps because he/she does not finish his/her lunch. When she walks over to the trash can, Chuck vibrates, reminding the user to compost. Then, the Chuck App monitors, tracks, and corrects the user’s waste disposal habits.
STORY BOARD
SCENARIO
Holly is on lunch break. She takes out her lunch
She does not finish her lunch because she is full and lunch break is over
She walks over to the trash can. Chucks vibrates, reminding her to compost
The Chuck app tells her how much she composted comapred to friends
05
Week of September 18th
IDEATION We used morphological chart and SCAMPER before we create low-fidelity prototype. First of all, Morphological chart was used to identify the important features and functions of our product. It helped us to consider different appearances, sizes, locations, and colors that we initially had on our mind while working on mind map, mood board, and collage. Though we could not incorporate all of the features in our prototype, it was a great opportunity to choose the best combination of each property that could effectively deliver our design intention to our intended users. The acronym SCAMPER refers to a process of revision that stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Out of seven strategies of SCAMPER, Substitute and Reverse were the most helpful in the development of our product. We wanted to substitute the 9V power source with a solar panel because the 9V battery was heavy and took a lot of space. By using solar panel, we could solve this issue and make our product smaller and lighter. We also wanted to reverse the location of sensor. Instead of the device having the sensor, we would attach the senor that activates the device to the trash can.
Morphological Chart
SCAMPER
06 Week of September 25th
IDEATION SKETCHES AND CO-DESIGN
From top left to clock-wise direction, (a) CHUCK Sketch 1 (b) CHUCK Sketch 2 (c) Co-Design (d) CHUCK app interface design
Based on the ideation strategies that we had worked on for the past few weeks, we sketched our bracelet design and mobile application interface. The most important challenge was to efficiently put all of the littleBits inside the bracelet. We came up with several options that could reduce the overall size of the bracelet and prevent the connections from coming apart. In this process, we decided to use Co-design method. We gathered peers and asked them to test our design. We believed that our peers were stakeholders because our target population ultimately included teenagers to adults concerned with sustainability and human impact on our environment. After explaining our vision and design in progress, we noted their interactions and thoughts. As a result, we could come up with a design that could improve our product’s functionality.
Week of October 2nd
PROTOTYPE LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE AND PERSONAS
07
After going through the 9 ideation strategies, we decided to create a lowfidelity prototype. We wanted to make the physical prototype because we could effectively test and evaluate our design in terms of usability and user experience in order to fix the possible problems in our product before we make a final (high-fidelity) prototype. We used cardboard, thin sponge, and wood glue. In addition, we developed Personas to illustrate likely users and imagine how Chuck could potentially be useful to different users. The first identifies a young, vibrant target population interested in staying in fashion and participating in the social media and mobile aspect of our design. The second targets older population who is environmentally conscientious and feels strongly about monitoring their waste. We tried to diversify the characteristics and expand the age range of our user personas within our target population to broaden our perspective on our product.
Low-Fidelity Prototpe (top) Pesona 1 (middle) Persona 2 (bottom)
08 Week of October 9th
EVALUATION CHUCK INTERFACE AND EARLY CONCEPT PRESENTATION
Our group used Sketch, a digital design toolkit, to create CHUCK app interface. We developed a tracking function of the app –one of the most important features of CHUCK app. Moreover, we presented our ideation strategies (that were especially useful throughout the process of our product’s development), prototype, demo video of how our product works, scenario and personas to our classmates. We thought it was a meaningful experience because we could get a lot of useful feedbacks from them. The feedbacks were 1) making the bracelet less angular 2) develop application better 3) the problem of tracking system. Those comments and evaluation helped us to guide our future direction of product development.
Week of October 9th
EVALUATION CULTURAL PROBES
This week, we learned about Cultural Probes. Cultural Probes is one of the Data Gathering methods that researchers provide users with a “kit” that probes user’s experience, wants, needs, with their developing design. In order to conduct this method, we prepared post-it notes, pen, and a camera and gave them to Jadon -a Cornell University student who is 20 years old. 2 days later, we got the kit and response back from him.
09
CULTRUAL PROBES
10
Week of October 23rd
EVALUATION THINK-ALOUDS
THINK-ALOUDS NOTE This week, our group underwent Think Alouds. Think Alouds is one of the evaluation methods that users say whatever they are looking at, thinking, doing and feeling as they interact with the prototype. Even though there were some positive comments, feedback about the problems associated with the design and its use was helpful to further develop our product and have holistic understanding of the user-prototype interaction. “It is very big to go on the wrist” “Maybe use more rigid strap material”
11 Week of October 23rd
EVALUATION USABILITY AND USER-EXPERIENCE SURVEY
Our group wanted to gain deeper comprehension of user-experience of our product. Therefore, we randomly chose 5 college students and held a survey. We began by showing a short video of our product in action and included a short verbal instruction about the survey. The first question asked users what environmental issue was being stressed. Three out of the five survey participants wrote “food waste”. This suggests that the connection was only somewhat clear. We also focused on the physical aspects of the bracelet in order to research what we should change before finalizing our physical design. It seemed that many thought the square was visually appealing but, in reality, too bulky to wear. For color, we received an even 5 way tie between all the colors. This may indicate that we should provide options for the users’ varying tastes. For the more abstract content such as ease and frequency of use we asked open ended questions and allowed participants to give us their thoughts. Again, the answers to these questions show that people are individual and have wide variety of preferences and come with many different options.
Surevy Questions (top) Participant 1 (bottom left) Participant 2 (bottom right)
Week of November 6th
EVALUATION DELPHI-METHOD EXPERIMENT
12
After conducting the survey on user-experience of our bracelet, we got so various answers depending on participants’ personal taste. Since we could not incorporate all of the different comments about size, shape, and color, we wanted to reach a consensus to make an optimal design by carrying out a Delphi-Method experiment. We gathered a panel of four Cornell students aged 19 to 22 and conducted multiple rounds of questions and discussions. This process greatly helped us facilitate a conversation about the shape, color, size and placement of the bracelet. The panel agreed that they favored round less obtrusive shape, neutral colors, small size with an adjustable strap, and the classic bracelet placement that stays on the wrist.
INFORMATION TAB
TRACKER TAB
This tab provides users with useful information about waste disposal.
Using this tab, users can track and monitor their waste disposal habit. It also provides weekly, montly, and yearly data.
13 Week of November 13th
ITERATION CHUCK APP INTERFACE ITERATION After gathering and evaluating user’s feedback, we discovered that several users commented about our Chuck app. Some of the users commented that the function of our app was unclear. The problem was that the previous app mock-up lacked specific information. Therefore, we decided to design a more detailed mock-up interface that sufficiently provides important function of each tab of our application.
FRIENDS TAB Users can compare their data with friends using this friends tab.
14 Week of November 20th
ITERATION CHUCK ITERATION
This week we developed our prototype further. Two members worked on designing the shape of bracelet using Rhino, according to the feedback we received while evaluating our previous prototypes. After designing the shape of our bracelet, they 3D-printed the components and combined them into one piece. Two other members focused on finding adequate material for the adjustable strap. Since the most notable flaw of our previous physical model was that users cannot adjust the size of CHUCK so some of the users could not put our bracelet on their wrist or it did not stay on their wrist. Therefore, we used a buckle which is easy to adjust the size and to put on one’s wrist.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Week of November 27th
15
Even though we made our second prototype, we found out that it was still too big and heavy for the users to comfortably use CHUCK. Therefore, our group had to find another material that can notably reduce the sizeand weight of CHUCK. After Testing several different materials, we concluded that cloth / fabric with rubber band was the best option. We sewed a fabric to make a pocket so that we could put our LittleBits inside of it and then sewded rubber band on the pocket. As a result, our final prototype became much lighter and much easier to put on one’s wrist than our previous prototypes.