Case study: Assessing the plug point and storage issues in one’s bedroom
I was always keen to learn UX design, and then my journey with User Experience started when I enrolled myself in the UX Mastery course by Growth School. The main aim of this project revolves around understanding users better through the design thinking approach. The idea was to choose a particular area of the house and identify the existing gaps in the user’s experience. As we were already divided into groups of 10, the users were none other than our group members. For the project, I choose the bedroom as my topic since most users spend their time in that particular area.
Bedroom? One would always work towards its perfection.
I kept my self-doubts aside and started my design thinking journey.
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is a process for understanding users, empathizing with them, and identifying gaps in their experience. This process enables us to come up with the best possible solution to the user’s problems. It consists of the following stages:
Before going ahead with the stages, it was important for me to understand that I am NOT the user and that I need to keep my personal experiences at bay and not let them cloud the insights that I receive from my users.
EMPATHIZE
The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem we are trying to solve.
The bedroom is that area where you spend most of your time.
Before interviewing my users, I prepared a few questions keeping in mind that it is best to keep the interview conversational in nature. The idea was to understand how people interact with their bedroom space, which would further help identify some of the gaps in their interactions.
It was suggested to interview at least 4–5 people among the group members (users). I was able to conduct 5 interviews over Discord.
While interviewing, we were told to strictly avoid suggesting to the users what we think is the solution. The interview is not for giving them solutions to their problems. It is about identifying their problems.
Following are the Interview questions:
0. Introduction questions like name, hobbies, occupation, where and whom do you live with etc?
1. How much time do you spend in your bedroom? What is your interaction in that area? How did you spend your last time in that area?
2. What are the likes and dislikes of your bedroom space?
3. How is the ventilation in your room?
4. Is there any source of natural light in your room? If yes, then what is the source?
5. How much space do you have for your clothes and accessories? How many cupboards are there in your bedroom?
6. What is your opinion on having a full size mirror in your room?
7. Do you prefer to work in your room? Can you explain the work or study setup in your bedroom and how the experiences are?
8. Do you have a study table for it? How comfortable is it? And where do you keep your laptop and charger?
9. How many plug points do you have in your room? And are you satisfied with the number and position of plug points?
10. Do you have side tables near your bed (both sides) and do they possess switch points?
All of my users had different stories. After interviewing, I also asked for the picture of their bedroom to connect better with the scenario.
DEFINE
Now comes the interesting part, the define stage. After collecting and segregating all of the data from empathizing stage, it was time to define the problems for the insights gathered.
The idea was first to understand the problem and then dig deeper to see why this problem is important to the user. This process also helped me realize why these problems existed in the first place.
Eleven problem statements were constructed after the segregation of all the problems. I have also written down why these problems were important for users to get solved.
1. Find a way for Poorani to have a calm and pleasant light in her room - since she is working from home so she wants a relaxing and pleasant atmosphere for that.
2. A space for Poorani and Nihal to walk in their room - They want more space since the furniture comes in their way while walking.
3. Find a way in which Poorani, Nihal, Vidushi, Divya can easily access the plug points - They all are not happy with the positions of their plug points as they face difficulty in charging.
4. Find a way in which Poorani and Vidushi can have more storage- They want things to be placed in an organised manner.
5. A way for cleaning Vidushi and Nihal’s room since they face a lot of dust issues - They have to clean their room once a day due to dust and they do not have time for this.
6. Find a way for Divya to make her dressing area more ventilated - When divya wants to get ready for a party or comes out of bath, she suffocates so she places a table fan in her dressing area and then this causes space problems.
7. A solution for more light over the dresser for Vidushi - Whenever Vidushi gets ready to go out she faces light issues in her dressing area while applying makeup.
8. Find a way in which Srishti can have a pleasant feel in her room - Srishti is not happy with the vibrant red color of her room and because of this she avoids going to the room often.
9. A space for Srishti to keep her books, laptop nicely on the study table - Srishti has many belongings like books, laptop and other stationery items with her while studying but doesn’t have enough space near her to keep them so she wants something near her study table.
10. Find a way for Nihal in which he gets less disturbed with the noise while working - Nihal has his bedroom on the first floor of the apartment so he faces noise issues while studying.
11. A way through which Nihal could easily see himself in the mirror so that he doesn’t have to bend - Nihal has a 3/4th size mirror in his room and he is 6ft tall so he has to always bend to see himself full in the mirror and this causes him difficulty.
IDEATE
Now that my problems were defined, I used the Crazy 8 technique to come up with solutions. Some ideas were quite difficult to attain and were not really viable. After coming up with at least 20 solutions I realized that only a few could actually be executed. Below are those few ideas (out of which 3 top ideas were chosen)
Wall lamps with warm light in the room which will provide a relaxing and pleasant ambience.
A vacuum cleaner-fitted-wiper for Nihal and Vidushi to clean their bedroom regularly.
A movable small cabinet with 2–3 plug sockets near the bed.
A small portable fan fixed near the mirror to avoid moisture in the dressing area for Divya.
An automatic small device which can easily clean the dust by just placing it on the surface.
A movable battery operated cabinet with 3 drawers in which one of the drawer has plug points for charging the devices like phones, ipads, laptop etc. called as the charging drawer and the rest drawers for storage.
A small device which can absorb noises from outside and can be placed on the wall.
A standing full size mirror in the room which doesn’t take much space.
A cosmetic mirror with LED light attached near the dressing mirror to help in makeup for Vidushi.
A robotic dust cleaner for Vidushi and Nihal which would clean their bedroom automatically on a regular basis.
The Top three ideas which I finalized among all the others to go forward with:
- A movable battery-operated cabinet with 3 drawers in which one of the drawer has plug points for charging devices like phones, iPads, laptops, etc. called the charging drawer, and the rest drawers are used for storage — This would help most of my users who are not happy with the plug points and have storage issues.
- A small device that can absorb noises from outside and can be placed on the wall — In the current scenario, most people are working from home so I picked up this idea as I want to not only help Nihal but others too who are facing the same issue while working or studying.
- Wall lamps with warm light in the room will provide a relaxing and pleasant ambiance — This idea will provide a soothing atmosphere in the room if one has to concentrate and want a quiet feeling.
Idea 1 was taken further for the prototyping and testing stages.
PROTOTYPE
This is the stage where we actually make a representational model of the solution we came up with.
PROBLEM STATEMENT — To assess easily the plug point and storage issues in the bedroom.
I took Idea 1 forward for the prototype stage. The idea was based on providing storage spaces for my users and for charging their devices. I thought of making it movable so that users can move it according to their pace and space in their room. There are roller wheels at the end for the cabinet with a stopper.
Most of my users face problems in charging and are not happy with the position of their plug points. Hence, keeping that in mind, I came up with this idea.
I created some sketches to start with to decide which fits best for the user requirements.
During this prototyping stage, I realized that the solutions need to be easy to understand and use.
TEST
Now it was time to take the prototype to the users and ask for their feedback.
Iteration 1
User 1 (Poorani) :
“It is a good design. I like that we can keep it wherever in the area and we don’t need to stand at one place and wait for the charging to complete.”
Poorani’s concern is that if multiple users are sitting on different spots, then keeping the phone or any device will be difficult to operate.
User 2 (Divya) :
“It is an impressive and nice design. Really loved the fact that it is movable.”
Divya’s major concern is how many batteries this design will require as the power must be limited then accordingly what will be the cost.
User 3 (Srishti) :
“Perfect design. It’s so cool that it moves.”
Srishti also has the same concern similar to Divya about the power and cost.
User 4 (Nihal) :
“The idea is very nice. I like the fact that it is movable and battery operated so that’s very cool for the person like me who uses his phone while on charge.”
Nihal feels that when you keep your phone on charge, you have to keep opening the drawer a lot as he uses his phone on charging as well, so opening the drawer often will be inconvenient.
Iteration 2
After the feedback that I had received, I understood some of the key points that I needed to incorporate in my design.
- I added a power plug as a whole in the cabinet. In this way, the cabinet could be used as an extension cabinet with storage and charging points. Hence, the cabinet is both battery-operated and has its own plug wire. It will solve the limited power problem and the cost.
- I also added the railings on the top surface of the cabinet with the hole. Railings would avoid the falling of devices when kept on the top surface. The hole is for wires to come out (and do not clutter) on the top surface of the cabinet. Through this, the user can either keep the phone on the top or in the drawer during charging as per their requirements.
LEARNINGS
I think one of the biggest learnings from the project is that I am not the user and that I should try my level best to keep my personal biases aside while interviewing the users. I have also realized that I need to unlearn a lot of things.
Another significant takeaway was that I need to understand that my solution need not try and solve every problem that the user is facing. The solution can be straightforward as long as it is efficient and is enhancing the user’s experience.
Thank you for reading! If you liked this article, let me know in the comments! All feedback is heartily welcome, and you can also find me on LinkedIn (link given).
