Francesco
Scheffczyk

At the end of my semester abroad in the course “Interaction Design” at Malmö University, we had to work in a group to develop a design artefact on the theme of isolation, going through all major steps of the design process.

Discover

During the discovery phase of our project, we explored ideas and topics regarding the theme of isolation. Topics we discussed were habits and how they change through isolation, how learning and knowledge sharing change in a digital and remote world, and how difficult it is to stay inspired during a phase of isolation. After a lot of brainstorming and talking, we settled down on the topic of habits and how to track them.

To get a better sense for the topic, we developed questions for quantitative and qualitative research. We asked our questions through several surveys and personal interviews and collected the answers.

Define

After our research phase, we sorted the data and summarised them. Some main research findings we got were:

• People have a hard time separating free time and work time
• People don't sleep the way they should
• People want to keep their work/life separated
• A lot of people who don't track their habits today and have issues with balance and prefer softer motivation over harder motivation
• People get distracted by habit tracking through their phone, i.e. push notifications

From that we developed our main problem statement:

People have issues keeping their regular balance between work, free time and sleep.

Develop and Prototype

Our idea to solve this problem was to develop a physical device that helps the user to maintain the balance between work, free time and sleep even in isolation. After some exploration and sketching, we came up with a pyramid-like shape with an LED ring on the front. Depending on which side the pyramid was standing on, an area of life (work, free time, sleep) was tracked, and the ratio was displayed on the LED ring.

To get to this result, we went through many prototyping phases. First, we started sketching ideas and shapes. This was especially important in the beginning to better visualize our own idea to the other group members.

After we had fleshed out the idea, we started working on different prototypes in parallel. While two of the group started working on a functional prototype, the rest of the group started working on look and feel prototypes. This had some advantages. On one hand, we could focus on important aspects of the design artefact and think it more through. On the other hand, we could do user testing in parallel and did not have to wait for the results of the others. So, I could already test different colour combinations for the LED ring on users with the help of a 3D rendering, while Jim was still working on the code for the functional prototype. We were able to develop and test different sub-aspects of the artefact more independently and effectively. Also, by creating many prototypes and testing regularly, we could always be sure that we were on the right track for our project.

In the end, we filmed a video in which we show how the interaction between the artefact and the user. This one is especially helpful in providing context and, most importantly, showing ways to use the artefact. So, if you want to get a better understanding of our idea, I recommend that you watch the video. You can find the link on top of the page our just click here.

At this point I would also like to thank Jim, Max, Leon and Valentino again for the great group work. Thanks guys! ✌