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Team Greenery

Role: UX Researcher/Designer and Product Developer
At: University of Michigan School of Art and Design | Class: IOE/ TO Integrated Product Development | Time Frame: September 2023 - Ongoing | Collaborators: Jihong Zhao, Suha Asadulla, Xianwei Lei, Sophia Ke

Project Overview

1. Objectives
2. Primary and Secondary
    Research
3. HMW's and Ideation
4. User Testing
5. Final Design

IMG_4463 (1).heic

1. Objectives
 

Integrated Product Development is a class where teams of interdisciplinary students are assigned a challenge and must compete with each other to develop the best product by the end of the semester. The grand finale consists of a trade show where members of the community are invited to participate and "purchase" products with artificial money. The team who has the largest market share at the end of the trade show wins.

The Details:

  • Challenge: Design a tangible outdoor wellness product that empowers adults over 40 to engage with nature, improve their physical and/or mental well-being, and foster a habit of outdoor activities.

  • ​Budget and Pricing: Target retail price is to be no more than $200 and our total budget for the project is $600.

2. Primary and Secondary Research
 

We began our journey with secondary research. Being from an information/UX background I knew we would want some familiarity with the subject and problem space before beginning primary research. Our interviews would not be fruitful if we were unable to ask the right questions. I directed the team to engage in secondary research as well, knowing the more research we had the better informed we'd be.

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I, and the rest of the team, each researched several articles covering the benefits of outdoor recreation, types of activities outdoors, and problems around aging.  We then synthesized our information and generated a list of questions to ask our target users. 

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Our first round of interviews focused on three core areas. Below are the core areas as well as example questions for each area.

  • Types of activities and motivations

    • “What kinds of outdoor activities do you like to do?"

  • Frequency of activities

    • "What time of day do you like to do X activity?"​

  • Limitations and challenges

    • "Walk me through the last time you experienced a challenge during X activity."​

 

We generated an affinity diagram with the responses from our initial interviews. 

Affinity diagram consiting of at least 100 sticky notes grouped into similar patterns.

Affinity Map Process

Important findings from our affinity diagram included hiking as a common outdoor activity, fear of further aggravating an injury or receiving a new injury while hiking, a need to bring emergency meds (inhalers, EpiPens, etc) while out. 

To further clarify our problem space, we decided to conduct observations. We had a picnic near a popular hiking trail, Barton Pond, in Ann Arbor Michigan. 

 

A woman walking her medium sized brown dog on a gravel trail lined with trees.
An older couple walking on a trail with a tree trunk framing the left side of the picture.
A man walking his medium sized black dog on a trail.
A man walking on a trail with his two small dogs.

Observations at Barton Pond

Our observations clued us into something very important even the dog lovers amongst our team missed; people love to take their dogs on hikes with them!

With our findings from research be generated How Might We statements to further hone in on our problem space.

3. HMW's and Ideation
 

We picked three of our favorite How Might We's:

  • How might we improve the dog walking experience?

  • How might we excite people who don't hike in order to increase outdoor engagement?

  • How might we promote physical wellness and safety?

 

and began ideating possible product solutions by brainstorming each HMW on paper.

The team crouching near our ideations on paper, we're all smiling and giving a thumbs up.
A list of final product/tech solutions on paper in purple marker.

Our Ideation Process

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Our Favorite HMW's and accompanying product ideas with votes indicated by smiley faces

4. Concept Testing
 

Product ideas were roughly sketched out with a concept card for each idea. The team settled on one product idea to further expand into additional concept cards. Five total cards were created in order to send a survey to our targeted audience to gauge responses. 

Original Concept Cards

We then created a google form using imagery and descriptions from our concept cards to test features (including symbols indicating to not engage with the dog) and overall preferences of dog harnesses with our targeted audience. Given the short turnaround time we used a survey site to reach the largest possible audience.

The most important results we received were that 68% of responders preferred the Comfort and Convenience Harness and that 75% of responders understood what the do not approach symbol meant.

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Harness with Do Not Approach Symbol

5. Final Design
 

Slides with Final Designs

6. Impact
 

While participating in this class I learned:
- how to work together within an interdisciplinary team with diverse perspectives
- iterations with a physical product rather than digital
- preparing a product to enter the market

Developing physical products take more time and resources to develop and perfect than a digital product. Although the same cycles of design are applied to physical products, prototyping, user testing, and material selection tend to be more complex. Testing cannot be done via the internet and mockups need to be physically created. I enjoyed the challenges product development posed and the fresh perspective on UX research and design it offered.

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