"How many designers does it take to replace a light bulb?"
Designer: "Does it have to be a light bulb?"
Think about some of the designs that you consider to be great innovations. Quite likely, they came about because the design team was able to see a new problem or opportunity, or reframe things in a new way. As the light bulb joke illustrates, an important strategy of successful designers is to reframe things so that... we can see things in a new light. This first week's exercise is intended to work your perception and reframing "muscles". How creative can you be? (Later exercises will work different "muscles".)
Any questions about this assignment should be posed to the forums and will be answered promptly by the staff.
For this first project, your mission is to redesign the experience of waiting in line.
An important part of the designer's role is to come up with a point of view. For example, your point of view might be that standing in line is intrinsic, but being bored is not.
What can we do with our time that is more productive, more interesting, or more entertaining than just wait? Maybe it's reading the news, playing a game, or preempt the parents by giving them a surprise call? Alternatively, your point of view might be to eliminate the line by preordering, or hire people to act as placeholders in the line? Or maybe this is precious time for us to do nothing? A few minutes to space out, or quickly center ourselves. No matter what you come up with, it should be something that improves the experience of standing in line. For one jumping off point, here's a few thoughts from the New York Times.
This assignment will introduce iterative design so that during the main course project, the steps of the design process will be more familiar. For further explanations about the design process, have a look at the d.school Bootcamp Bootleg here.
Observing people helps designers learn more about their needs, goals, desires, abilities, values, and situation. In this assignment, we bootstrapped this process for you by observing and interviewing people about standing in line. You can find the video here. Go through the video. If you have the opportunity, you are encouraged to observe and interview line-waiters by yourself.
Use insights from it as background material, and brainstorm ideas for how you would redesign the waiting in line experience. Go for volume when you brainstorm, you should come up with at least 20 different ideas. Ask a couple of people to get together and brainstorm with you, you will find that it's easier to find inspiration when you work with other people.
Select your two favorite ideas and give a 1-sentence explanation of why you chose each. Choosing these two prototypes does not mean that you will have to work on them for the rest of the quarter. We would like you to get a good idea of how to use these skills and determine problems before choosing your final project idea.
Take these two ideas and rapidly prototype them. Really rapidly. No computers. Go for very, very simple. For instance, if your idea involves a mobile phone, use 3 x 5 index cards to represent the screen, and a sharpie. Anything that won't fit into that is too detailed. If your idea is more conceptual, rapidly prototype the experience however you see fit. Use any props you think will effectively convey the look and feel of the user experience, but remember to keep it simple. As a rule of thumb, each prototype should take about a half-hour to produce.
Take pictures of your prototypes.
Now you are ready for feedback. Pick one of your prototypes and find people (people really waiting in line) to try it out. Go to the place you intend your design to be used, people who will use your prototype as if it was a real application. Explain that you'd like their help, and that it'll take 5-10 minutes of their time. If the activity is quick, we recommend trying it on at least 5 people. If it takes some time, at least 3 users should be fine.
Given that your prototype is made of pulp, markers, and imagination, you'll need to be an active operator. For example, if a user "clicks" a button, you simulate what would happen by changing screens (new index card). Do not tell the user what to do. Prototypes are a probe; a way to get feedback and learn how to improve your design. Success is not blithely saying "people really liked it" but rather "I learned all of these cool things that will make the design better". Iterative design is about "failing" early and often, in order to rapidly arrive at a great design.
Take notes and pictures of what users do and say. Pay attention to when people get confused or if they offer feedback on what they liked or didn't like. Use your notes to help you reflect on the feedback you received; distill a list of major insights that could inform a future revision. These insights should require some reflection on your part; it is not just taking what users take point blank.
Here are two student examples from last year. Keep in mind that the assignment was slightly different last year.
| Category | Nope | Weak | Proficient | Mastery |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brainstorm 3 points |
No ideas brainstormed. | Less than 5 ideas brainstormed that connect to a user need or point of view. Could have been improved with more ideas. | 5 - 10 ideas brainstormed that connect to a user need or point of view. Could have been improved with more ideas. | 20 ideas brainstormed that connect to a user need or your point of view. |
| Prototype Reasoning 3 points |
No explanation submitted. | The reasoning was thin, could have applied to many different ideas, and/or does not relate to a user need. | The reasoning somewhat connects to the point of view or a user need. | The reasoning connects strongly to a point of view or a user need. |
| Prototype 3 points |
No prototypes submitted. | Fewer than 2 prototypes; unnecessary formality. | 1 prototype, created rapidly OR 2 prototypes, unnecessary formality. | 2 prototypes, created rapidly. |
| Testing 3 points |
No user testing. | The testing was hasty, and done with your roommates for the sake of convenience. | The testing was hasty, although done with real users who were waiting in a real line. | Yes. With real users who were waiting in a real line. |
| Insights 3 points |
No insights submitted. | The list just contains things that could have been figured out without any prototyping and testing. | Pretty much all the insights came from either silent visual observation or direct user feedback (but not both). | Conceptual insights that would enable revision. It was obvious that visual observation of the users and direct feedback from the users were both helpful. |
| Outside the Box 1 point. Up to 5% of submissions. | Really creative (i.e., both novel and useful) prototyping technique and/or point of view. | |||
Design can excel in many ways, and often the best designs are unanticipated. To acknowledge and encourage this, each assignment offers a few points for this truly out-of-the-box work. Great design is also rare. So these points can only be achieved by at most 5% of submissions. If it helps, you can think of this as kind of like an A+.
Your prototype should be really rapid -- marker on index cards or similar. Capture people using it with a camera. Still photographs are best; it forces you to focus on key insights. But if you want to submit a short video, that's okay.
You only need to test one of your prototypes for this assignment.
To keep it simple for this assignment, we suggest you observe and test on a typical line — where there are people waiting in line for a service or good. You are free to get creative but keep in mind that it will make it more difficult for you to test your prototype.
Fidelity (how real things should be and what counts as a reasonable surrogate) is always task specific, and dependent on two factors. First, how long would it take to make it real? A banana is easy to come by -- maybe 75 cents and ten minutes. So if you need a banana, grab a real one. A text validator, on the other hand, would take longer. So there, you'd fake it for an early prototype. Second, how much benefit do you gain? If you were going to use a banana as a phone headset, the ergonomics matter. A picture wouldn't really cut it. But you could fake a banana by using a similarly-sized prop.
You can choose another line to redesign, just be clear about what type of line you are designing for. You can have different ideas for different lines, as long as its clear.
Your intervention doesn't need to be a 'computer'. There does need to be a design. So if people are going to tell each other jokes, there's going to be some artifact prompting that. A simple sign would start, but my guess is that most would ignore it. So you might need more scaffolding (like a specific prompt, or rotating set of prompts to keep things fresh), and a screen would be one way to do it. This is your chance to warm up for the quarter and practice a complete cycle of human-centered design. All designs are fair game and the only limit is your creativity.