This week our team was tasked with more clearly defining the problems that users with one arm face when doing dishes. Creating a persona for a target user who might face this issue allowed us to think more about a specific person and the limitations that they would face when doing dishes. By using this persona, our outside research, and personal immersion experiences we were able to map out what issues exist for a user who needs to complete this task with one arm. This made it easy to identify the problems that they would face and the needs that the user would have when doing dishes. Since we spent time doing these tasks ourselves it was very clear what the problem areas were. The main four areas that cause problems are: precise cleaning / drying of dishes, stability, movement, and space. This easily translated over towards needs statements.
Although we do not yet have an exact product in mind that will solve the needs that we have identified within our target user group, we have been able to successfully map out what the needs are. This is a great stepping stone going forward that we will be able to use as we seek to design a product to meet our users’ needs. The steps we have taken so far as a group have allowed us to get to this point. We can see as a group how even though some of the previous steps may have seemed tedious, that it has been a necessary part of the design process. Going forward we are excited to come up with ideas to meet the needs that we have identified within our user group.