Empathy - Interview

(Skillings,2020)

As we discussed in the previous blogs, being empathic to the target users is the key to a successful design. Therefore, I conducted a phone interview with my uncle to empathize with his thoughts on design-solution related to my design challenge. I picked him as his job involves constantly visiting the bank and offices for meetings. He is 40 years old, and he shared interesting facts and valuable information related to the design challenge. Interviews are most effective for quality research. You get the gist of the real issues only through the eye of the person experiencing it. They help you understand better, explore research subjects, and unwind the opinions and experiences of the end-user.

Design interview questions:

Following are the questions I carefully framed to understand the core of the problem. I started with general questions and then the next day I asked for more informative and in-depth questions.

Q1. How often do you go out during the pandemic? Where & Why?

Q2. When you go out, do you have to wait in queues? If yes, which age group of people did you find there?

Q3. Do people maintain social distancing while waiting?

Q4. Do you feel safe when sitting on the bench while waiting?

Q5. Do they sanitize the waiting area frequently?

Q6. Why do you think there isn’t proper social distancing seating in public areas?

Conducting this interview, I got quality and genuine feedback about the design issues and a better understanding of the behavior of the people in the surroundings. I conducted two interviews on two different days. This helped me gain a fresh perspective of the interviewee. Empathizing with the user made me question not only how the product should be designed but also how can it be made to suit and adopt the user’s behavior. It is important to keep in mind that the design should adapt to the user and not the other way around.

Do comment down below and share your views and experiences about public seating during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Thank you for reading the article!

Comments

Build - Prototyping Stage

Prototype improves the overall understanding of the design. A rapid prototype helps to illustrate the final product, allowing to comprehense the product's function and target audience. A slight shift in proportions can make a huge difference and completely change the look and function of a product. Every product has a target audience, and at the end of the day, the target audience is going to have the final say. Prototypes allow user testing, which improves designs with valuable feedback about the product. Below is my prototype which is built to understand the arrangement and stability of the design. I used cardboard and translucent pannels to build the prototype. Through rapid prototyping, I identified few issues with the design. The wood logs which are substituted with cardboard are not supported when they meet the polycarbonate partition. For the solution, metal joints can be attached to support and fix the logs with the partition. Thank you for reading my blog. Do share your fe...

TEST- understand, observe, visualize and iterate.

Testing, in Design Thinking, involves generating user feedback as related to the prototypes you have developed, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of your users. Testing is the chance to get a product out into the world and test it in real-time. During this phase, you have a chance to see if you’ve framed the problem correctly. Above is my recording and evaluation from the user testing. The user seems satisfied with the product and didn't have much to offer when it came to concluding drawbacks. Therefore I had to closely observe the user interaction to identify the points of improvement. Thank you for reading my blog. Do share your views on the testing stage in the comment section below.

Final Prototype - User Interaction

Integrating prototyping into your product development process can be transformational. It can make a richer experience, and enable the user to empathize with the product. The point of a prototype is to have a tangible visual representation of the solutions discussed throughout the design process. Instead of repeating the information discussed in the ideation phase - a prototype acts as a model that takes into consideration everything discussed. Having this model allows me as a designer to validate my concepts by sharing the prototype with the users. After observing the user interaction with the mockup model, I made few modifications and then finally prototype was built. The materials used in the final model were polycarbonate sheets and a wooden bench. The polycarbonate was sourced from a small-scale roofing factory where the extra polycarbonate sheets which were wrongly cut or minorly defective were available at a very reasonable price. Whereas I searched for wooden ...

Weekly Blogs on Creativity and Innovation

Search This Blog