INTERACTION DESIGN PROJECT: TECAID

Helping baby boomers request for timely technical assistance.

Role

Interaction designer

Overview

Followed the entire user-centered design process involving interviews, sketches, personas and prototypes and came up with an app Tecaid.

What is Tecaid?

Tecaid is an app that helps baby boomers request for timely technical assistance from local neighborhood high school students looking for community service credit.

PROCESS FOLLOWED

Problem Statement

Baby boomers struggling to complete daily tasks through the use of technology and in turn, reaching out to their children as tech support.

Competitive analysis

I looked at various competitors working on solving the same problem like SkillfulSenior.com, Teamviewer,LogMeIn, Eldy etc. Each one of them assumed that either the elderly person has some knowledge of computer or has someone to help them in case of technical urgency.

Sketches

I started brainstorming the potential solutions by sketching them. Some of the solutions were asking local children for help, doing google search, asking a librarian, etc.

Scenario

I came up with a scenario for all my solutions where I thought it could be used. Below is the scenario for my actual solution.

Personas

To analyse my solution and making sure that I am designing for my target user during every phase of the design process, I came up with a persona. It would also help me at the end to measure the success of the product.

Interviews

I conducted interviews with a few baby boomers and some important things surfaced.

Use of watsApp to connect the baby boomers was not encouraged a lot as it was very much dependent on demographics.

The population in this range wants to get their work done as quickly and as much without frustration as possible and they like to ask for help. For this they consider, library as one of the best resource.

One of the interviewees suggested that there would be a security issue with the primary school children, so why not consider high school children looking for community service credit.

Thus I shifted my focus to connecting baby boomers to high school children as by the above reasoning, the high school students would have much more motivation to help and also the security issue is somewhat eliminated.

Brainstorming

While brainstorming with 2 of my peers:

The idea about asking a librarian stuck to us the most as it is free and essentially the work gets delegated to someone else.

Teaching google search idea came off as something which was very hard to implement but which can have very high impact.

Using Teamviewer to help solve the problem had problems such as what happens when the issue is with connection of physical devices.

Paper prototype

I did the QOC analysis, to evaluate the features I want to put in the app and came up with 3 potential solutions and made paper prototypes out of them.

I tested my paper prototype with the same baby boomers and my peers to get their feedback. After several round of iterations, I was able to finalise a solution. Check out the video for the paper prototype here.

Digital prototype

After that I converted the paper prototype into digital prototype to be developed into an app. Check out the video here.

Did it work?

When I showed my app to 3 of the target users, they were extremely excited about the app. They wanted to have it as soon as possible as they said there is a real need for it.

Even checking with my peers, I received acknowledgement saying that this is definitely an issue that needs attention and my concept is something that addresses it really well.

Learnings from the process

Focus on the need: The solution might change but the need would not.

Always keep your user in mind while designing in every phase of the process.

Getting feedback from target users is extremely important and there feedback supersedes any other type of feedback.

Sketch your ideas in order to get people quickly on the same page as yourself.

• Date: September - December 2016
• Client: None
• Category: Interaction design

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY PROJECT: NEW EAGLE

Finding gaps in the order fulfilment process of New Eagle.

Role

User experience researcher

Overview

Conducted contextual inquiry and created an affinity wall to study and find out the gaps in the order fulfilment process of New Eagle.

Who is New Eagle?

New Eagle is a mechatronics control systems solutions expert that helps a customer take his or her idea to prototype phase or to the market in the quickest way possible.

PROCESS FOLLOWED

Initial Meeting

To get a sense of our client’s domain and the problem they are facing. The biggest challenge for New Eagle was that too many of their processes on the operations side were manual and the systems weren’t speaking to each other.

We identified key stakeholders, did interviews in contextual inquiry style while interpreting them side by side, did background research and constructed an affinity wall. We found 5 main issues:

Manual process

Paper versus paperless

Niche business keeps customers

Customers uncertainty of the order status

Customers options in regards to payment on website are limited

Iteration

The key themes were discussed with our client contact to find out the most problematic area which when solved will help them the most. 3 key themes emerged from this phase.

Recommendations

After brainstorming, we came up with 2 short term/low impact and and 1 long term/high impact solutions.
1. Going paperless (Short term/low impact) – Using LilyPad, a plugin for Fishbowl, the order fulfilment software currently in place, which extend its capabilities to other devices like tablets, smartphones etc.
2. Improving the webstore (Short term/low impact) – Adding more payment options for the client apart from the existing credit card payment only. Showing prices to customers but showing discounted prices to premium customers.
3. Implementing a CRM (long term/high impact) – Implementing an ERP (Enterprise resource planning) system like BizSlate which integrates with their existing accounting software and helps in managing inventory and orders.

Did it work?

Our recommendations were highly appreciated and appraised by the entire operations team of new Eagle. Out of the 3 recommendations we recommended, 2 of them are currently being implemented.

Learnings from the process:

1. In interviews people try to appear ideal. So it is very important to listen to the things people are not saying.

2. After developing interview protocol, conduct an interview to find out whether it works. This makes the future interviews much more valuable.

3. Always back your recommendations with substantial amount of data, otherwise there are high chances of them being ignored.

4. Involve the user and keep on checking with him about your findings to make sure you are on the right track.

• Date: September - December 2016
• Client: New Eagle
• Category: UX Research

INTEGRATED PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:
STIL

Helping people manage everyday stress

Overview:

Created an anxiety relief band: stil that helps people in managing everyday stress. Conducted user research using interviews and surveys, brainstormed and sketched concepts, prototyped a looks like and works like model and showcased the same in a trade show.

I along with my 6 other team members (2 MBAs, 1 art and design, 1 engineering and 2 UX design students) developed an anxiety relief wristband that helps people in managing everyday stress. While creating it, we went from a completely ambiguous phase of where we had to create a wearable that can be worn routinely in daily life and solves some need, to presenting a fully developed product in a trade show. During the process we talked to anxiety attack sufferers and medical professionals to make sure that we solve the user’s need.

I led the user research phase by conducting the interviews with anxiety attack sufferers and medical professionals and deriving important insights from them to drive the direction of the concept. I created a conjoint analysis survey through which we could analyse the combination of features that was most preferred by our users. I also helped the team in concept testing, creating the website for the product, coming up with visual design for the product and realizing the works like model.

Problem Statement

As a part of the course on Integrated Product development, we were given a problem statement of creating a wearable that can be worn routinely and that solves a particular need for the user.

Process followed

As we began to work on this problem, among the team we identified the fact that the wearable market space seems to be saturated and unless the product does something essential that is not covered by wearables like fitbit and Apple watch, it would not be perceived well by the users.

Brainstorming

We started looking at all the problems we could think of that needs to be solved. At this point we just wanted to throw everything we had on the whiteboard.

Then we grouped together similar ideas into some broad themes.

Going with our initial assumption of the wearable market being saturated, we decided to focus on a niche market instead. With this criterion in mind, we started to vote and ended up with acute health management and daily health as 2 prospective areas of research.

We split the team into 2 and researched both areas for a week.

In the end each group presented their findings to the other.

Then we went with the consensus and went with the concept that we as a team thought was feasible, niche and worth pursuing based on our intuition. This concept was related to solving the needs for anxiety sufferers.

We began to explore this idea with full force starting with interviewing people who suffered with either mild anxiety or extreme anxiety and by talking to medical professionals.

Some insights we got were:

Summary - Everybody suffers from anxiety but the people who have anxiety attacks fail to manage it properly. Once the stress level starts to increase, there is a tip off point at which it is impossible to control and the person suffers from an anxiety attack.

Detection – Heart rate increases, shallow breathing, tightness in muscles. External detection is very difficult.

Symptoms – Increased heart rate, palpitations, uncontrolled breathing and sweating, extreme fear of death and passing out during severe attacks.

Coping mechanisms – Breathing exercises, be directed to focus on a distraction outside of the self, needs some outside physical stimulus

Medication – Decreases the frequency of attacks but doesn’t stop them. Some of the side effects include drowsiness, dependency and reduced effectiveness over time.

In parallel, we continued our research and looking at research papers to increase our clarity of the anxiety detection process and the measures taken to manage it. Some takeaways here were:

Data from wearables improves self-management by making data visible

Growing number of consumers willing to adopt wearables for health

Sensor technologies reaching maturity across domain

Wearables could be applied with success in managing moderate anxiety through aided mindfulness (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, “CBT”) techniques

Scenario
Persona

We positioned our product to handle stress before it reaches the tip-off point.

Concept testing

We came up with 5 different concepts in which this problem could be solved.

We looked at 2 competitor products as well to make sure that our product is different from what is already present in the market and to see if the users prefer them over our chosen concepts.

For concept testing, we mixed up all the products and presented them to 50 of our users (this included people who did not suffer from anxiety attacks but mild stress).

From the concept testing, the patch and one wrist wearable had the highest potential market share and the expected value. The ring wearable was less popular, particularly in male populations.

Thus we arrived at the following conclusions:

The product space was well received

There is a significant variety of coping mechanisms available for dealing with panic attacks

The product needs to be customizable or focussed on a niche market

The users showed a preference for a wearable that would act as a discrete tool to manage their symptoms

Conjoint analysis

In order to decide on the optimum set of features to put in and among the 2 concepts from the concept testing, we created a card sorting survey with different cards showing the device location and the feedback mechanism with respect to price. The respondents were asked to arrange the cards in their preference order from highest to lowest.

Some of the findings from the conjoint analysis were:

Users are willing to pay more for a wrist wearable than a clip-on or patch wearable

Users are indifferent to whether the wearable has an onboard screen

Users prefer LED-guided breathing feedback, but there is also willingness to pay for vibrations or buzzes

Thus after putting this all together, we created a looks like model and works like model.

The looks like model had 2 options:

a. A 3D printed wristband with slit in between where LEDs could be placed to guide the person in breathing



b. A customizable wristband in which the bands can be changed as per will.

Works-like model

Sensors used - Pulse and skin conductance sensors
Output - Soothing vibrations and LED lights guide user through boxed breathing technique

Here is the video of the works like model

In the end we developed a website and a marketing video in order to showcase our product at the mock tradeshow setup and selling it to the customers who arrived.

Check out the website here
The marketing video can be found here

• Date: January - April 2017
• Client: None
• Category: Product Design and Development

ABACA GAMES: SOCIAL IMPACT VIDEO GAME VENTURE

Helping high school students fight against climate change

Role

Principal UX designer

Overview

Designed a role playing video game to make high school students take action to curb climate change in a virtual environment.

Initial Problem statement

Develop a videogame to mitigate climate change.

Stakeholder interviews

Talked to a number of people in order define the problem in a better way.

We talked to 30+ stakeholders (which kept on adding during the process) and gathered data through them and came up with 4 major key takeaways.

A game could really help teachers and environment if it is able to teach the students about climate change.

Key audience is a high school student who care but not know what to do. His mind is still malleable.

High school teachers are teaching mixed messages when it comes to climate change.

Teachers are willing to assign climate change videogame as an extra credit or homework.

On running our concept through one of the educational experts, he mentioned that he loves the creative part of tricking kids into learning.

Empathy Map

We created an empathy map to find out the pain and gain points of high school students who would be somewhat interested in climate change.

From the empathy map, we grouped the pain points into some common themes.

Behaviour

Effectiveness

Action items

Seriousness

We decided to follow the path of action items and thus came up with a “how might we?”

Problem statement

How might we make high school students do something about climate change in a feasible way.

Then we sketched out a few solutions.

Among the many different solutions, based on some factors like feasibility and favorability among team members, we came up with a solution.

Solution

Role Playing mobile game that makes high school students take action to curb climate change in a virtual environment.

Competitive Analysis

We looked at 4 other popular games directly/indirectly related to climate change – Eco, climate change, Fate of the world and Sim City 5. We found that none of them focuses specifically on climate change, donates revenues towards climate change or allows teachers to use it as an evaluation tool.

Surveys

The survey was meant to analyse the awareness of high school students about climate change, their excitement level for a game related to climate change and if they would be willing to pay for it.

Survey Results

Many high school students said that they know climate change is an issue but it is not highlighted enough. They were not really sure what they can do in regards to the same.

Below image shows how the results change when the users know that their money is going to an environmental charity.

Thus we began with working on the prototype for the game. Below are some of the initial designs for the prototype.

Later on owing to the pervasiveness of mobile phones, we decided to make it as a phone game and went through another round of iteration before reaching the final design of prototype.

Check out the interactive prototype here

Screenshots of the final prototype



Did it work?

We tested the prototype with random people at the University of Michigan, Central campus. We also went to a high school- Star International Academy in Dearborn Heights, to test it out with high school students.
The concept garnered positive reviews and was seen as a way good way of making people learn about climate change

Some of the feedbacks we got were:

Learnings from the process

In a game, it is very important to educate the user about the concept and thus adopt a low floor and high ceiling approach.

It is very important to get the feedback of the target user; while all other people come in the end.

• Date: October 2016 - March 2017
• Client: None
• Category: Product Design

Usability Evaluation Project: Prevent Child Abuse America

Improving the usability of PIMS database

Role

UX Researcher

Client overview

a. Prevent Child Abuse America(PCAA) is an organization aiming towards improving the lives of families who are possibly at risk of abuse and provide them with the resources that they need.

b. They work with Healthy Families America organizations located in different areas and where program managers manage and organize the caseload internally and are accountable to people funding them.

c. PCAA provide the organizations with a database: PIMS that helps them manage this data and prepare reports for showing to their funders.

Client problem

a. PIMS was developed over 20 years ago and have still work in progress because the guidelines and the funders change over time and the populations which change as well.

b. The new version of PIMS is still in its beta version and the project manager wanted to know the areas in which he should be focussing on in order to make PIMS more usable and useful for the sites.

RESEARCH PROCESS

Original research questions

1. How do people feel about the PIMS database currently? Where are its issues?

2. What steps could be taken to make the PIMS database better and more user-friendly?

There were some areas that we particularly focused on while conducting our research: Participant home form, participant home visit form, standard reports and custom query.

Methods

a. Our methods involved getting familiarised with the database and documenting our personal experiences, notes, issues, and concerns.

b. We created a survey and sent it out to all the sites using the database. The survey was very successful and we were able to get 25 responses in 2 days which shaped our recommendations a lot.

c. We then started interviewing users from different sites. During the process, we also presented the interviewees with some suggestions that we came up with, to test if they found them useful.

d. Thus we gathered together the data from the interviews, surveys and our own research to find out the key themes and brainstorm on some ideas for our recommendations.

e. For the recommendations, we created 2 personas and scenarios keeping our target users in mind. We presented our findings and conclusions, giving some visual examples of the proposed changes to the database.

Key findings

Attitudes: Overall people have a favorable attitude toward the database
Behaviors: The number one use of the database is for data entry
Characteristics: Data entry and custom queries were some of the areas for frustration

Key complaints from users

1. Some reports give too much info, so they have to sift through the entire data set to find the info they are looking for.

2. Some fields like gender, DOB should pop up by themselves.

3. Custom query page could use a cheat sheet.

4. Keyboard Ability in the database could be improved.

RECOMMENDATIONS
High impact recommendations

1. Auto-fill: Auto-filling of fields in forms, especially the more complex forms such as the Home Form and Home Visit Form.

2. Sorting: Ability to sort the report data using criteria such as alphabetically, by SSW, by date, by status, etc.

3. Scrolling: Allow consistent scrolling on all pages, where one can scroll with a mouse and not have to move it over to the sidebar and drag or click the arrows several times.

4. Custom query: Having a SQL window where people can write their own queries and having a cheat sheet on the page for the not so tech savvy people.

• Date: February - March 2017
• Client: Prevent Child Abuse America
• Category: UX Research

Sample Interactions

Interactions designed from various projects that I worked on.

CREDIT CARD CHECKOUT

ITINERAIRE

PROFILE PAGE OF AN ADVISOR

• Date: September 2016 - Present
• Client: None
• Category: Visual Design