RUMIFICO: Caring Characters for Connection
Course: Human Centered Design Methods
Team Size: 5 people
Goals
- Collaborate and coordinate to bring about the best solution to the problem.
- To go through the design process, innovating freely and collaboratively, and generate a professional, targeted, useful, and scalable solution that has the potential for positive impact.
- To create space for everyone’s equal input.
Design Process
1. SET Factors
Social:
- Strong desire to stay connected with people that are geographically distant.
- Shared memories are more like connection with another person, losing connection and being isolated can lead to mental health issues.
- Seeking ways to connect with individuals beyond platforms currently available (making connections more “real”).
Economical:
- 58 percent of first-year students attended colleges and universities that were more than 50 miles(80km) away from home
- Wide variety of everyone’s disposable income within one family.
- Since the start of the 21st century, the number of migrants has grown exponentially, from 173 million in 2000 to 244 million in 2015.
Technological:
- Abundance of social media for young adults, lack of platforms to foster inter-generational communication.
-Use of AR/VR to recreate environments
2. Product Opportunity Gap
How might we create a communal device/and or an experience for users to share, transfer, and display photos and precious memories/moments that makes users better connect to their loved ones?
Facilitate interaction between parents and children once they move away to college, such as sharing critical updates and availability to connect.
Team generated 50 POGs before leveraging affinity diagrams and weighted matrices to combine ideas and select final POG.
3. User Research
Methods:
- 1survey
- 2 user observations
- 10 interviews (parent & child)
Key Findings:
- No common time of availability.
- Inability to express emotions and personal expression.
- Using multiple platforms for sharing and communication.
- Parents are always worried about their child’s safety
Compilation and organization of user research notes.
Picture taken mid-interview.
Personas:
Generated 5 personas to help ensure design met specific criteria that was discovered to be essential to the target demographic during user research.
4. Competitor Analysis
2X2 Matrix:
- Analyze both direct and indirect competitors.
- Gain a general understanding of the entire competitive landscape,
Value Opportunity Analysis (VOA):
Key Product Requirements:
Emotion:
- Possess the ability to share emotion.
- Provide the option to share information which assures others of one’s safety and well-being Identity.
Identity:
- Enable easy sharing of future plans and activities.
- Enable others to share their location or travels.
- Not inhibit personal expression.
Our product aims to differentiate by:
5. Concept Generation & Selection
Generation of ten individual concepts by each team member.
2X2 Combined Team Ideas Matrix:
- Confirmed diversity of thought and ideas.
- Became clear team was ready to begin concept selection.
Dot Voting:
- Gave equal voice to all team members.
- Reduced quantity of remaining concepts.
Affinity Diagram:
- Combined redundant ideas.
- Created ‘feature graveyard’.
VOA & Technology Target:
- Ensure selected concept matches original POG and has impact in for our target demographic.
- Note, concepts at the center satisfy all VOA must-haves and all concepts are grouped by digital intensity.
- Combination of similar concepts / impact levels and further idea refinement.
Final Concept Selection:
- Leveraged Pugh chart with critical criteria: VOA compatibility, timeframe feasibility, skills/resources, potential for impact, team enthusiasm, intuitiveness/simplicity, and professionalism.
- Results of Pugh chart and conversations with our HP mentor determined the selection of the 'Action Button'.
Action Button
- Nostalgia Design
- Incorporated IoT Device
A minimalist device that displays critical messages to loved ones, via visual and tactile alerts.
Integrating concepts:
- Hybrid, location sharing, personal, private.
- Choice of information (daily, safety, and emotion) sharing,
- Not inhibition of personal expression.
- Potential for future plan sharing.
- Improves communication between college students and their parents
- Easy to use / intuitive and durable
The Details:
- Easily communicates availability and unavailability.
- Messages are completely customizable allowing full self expression.
- The companion app combined with Rumifico hardware streamlines communication as it allows individuals to filter out all extra notifications and noise a smartphone provides.
- Nostalgia design allows for individuals who struggle with newer technology to engage seamlessly.
- Reminiscent of pagers.
- Compact size for portability.
5. Prototyping
Key Prototyping Goals:
The location, form factor and feel of receiving a message.
Low-Fidelity Prototypes:
- Visualize potential embodiments.
- Have a talking point with future users.
- Discuss differences in the team's original thinking.
High-Fidelity Prototypes:
- CAD models to map out our ideal
if given more time to develop.
- e-ink displays to provide tangible
sample of human-computer-interaction.
- NFC product, purchased to test
functionality and represent idea to
future stakeholders.
- Figma to create a sample of the app interface for user input.
CAD models
e-ink display
with
Arduino Uno
Figma app displays
Key Takeaways
Value of every single team member's voice.
- Final product would not have been able to address as many user needs without collaborative brainstorming, questioning, and thinking.
- Mid-semester feedback encouraged me to create space for everyone to take the lead. This served as a pivotal moment in the project which led to much greater outcomes for the team and will be something I actively work on going forward.
User research!
- Essential at all points in the design cycle.
- Exploring a combination of methods to gain the most holistic understanding of the target demographic.
- The value in observing users in their natural environment and speaking to multiple at once.
Leveraging differentiation.
- Taking an analytical approach to competitor analysis via VOA competitive landscaping.
- Understanding that it's impossible to prioritize or match all attributes and being strategic in which to neglect focusing on.
Prototyping has a purpose.
- Going beyond general visual or functional prototypes to specific, planned prototypes which test a critical assumption or question.
- Always creating the lowest fidelity prototype required to conduct the desired test.
Conclusion
2022 Jacobs Design Showcase went well and the RUMIFICO team won:
Best Overall
within the Human Centered Design Methods graduate course at UC Berkeley.
The team is excited to continue working on the project beyond the course's conclusion. The hope is to secure future funding through Jacobs in order to conduct further user research, iterating, prototyping, and testing before launching into the market.
