In this next phase, the team will narrow down the number of tasks focusing on the most relevant and important problem areas. First, the team brainstormed different problem areas through the use of mindmaps. This allowed the team to categorize tasks and decide which problem areas we will focus on going forward. The team has narrowed the scope of our project to three key problem areas and defined their problem statements.
Step 1: Mindmap of One-Armed User Problems
Problem Area 1: Getting Dressed
Problem Statement: Design a product that allows someone to put on and fasten upper body garments with only one arm.
User Needs: User needs to efficiently put on shirts, jackets, and other upper body garments that have common fasteners like buttons and zippers.
Solution Attributes: Dress efficiently, not require user to change existing wardrobe, aesthetically pleasing and fits well with most clothing.
Problem Area 2: Exercising and staying fit
Problem Statement: Design a product that can allow a one-armed user to perform exercise(s) requiring two arms.
User Needs: User needs to improve or maintain physique and health; needs to use gym equipment safely and easily; needs to be able to do core and arm exercises.
Solution Attributes: Exercise effectively, expand equipment availability, perform exercises requiring two arms.
Problem Area 3: Putting Away Laundry
Problem Statement: Design a product that allows a one handed person to quickly and neatly put clean laundry away.
User Needs: Quickly put away laundry after washing clothes, need clothes to be stored out of sight and kept wrinkle free.
Solution Attributes: Take up minimal space when not in use, useful for different types of clothing.
Group Reflection:
The group started out with four members and two of them dropped the course. After the drop deadline of 6 weeks into the semester, Jeremy, a member from the other team, joined this team to make two teams of 3 just before problem definition. The dropped students helped with initial brainstorming and research briefly, but did not present the findings. Now, synthesizing the research of the new member with current team research has been unusual. The team believes Jeremy will be a valuable addition and can provide a different perspective to solving problems.
This project allowed and forced our group to begin think about and define the problem to be solved. It was hard to narrow down the number of tasks once again. One difficulty came about because, without doing further research, it was hard to know which problems have already been solved effectively.
The team had difficulty differentiating user needs and solution attributes. Once we understood these as requirements and constraints, respectively, it became easier to identify. Moving forward, the team believes it will be challenging establishing a project direction. The reason being with more research, the team may potentially have to take a step back (iterative process) either redefining our problem statements or identifying different user needs and solution attributes. Correspondingly, this is an opportunity to better understand the user and an opportunity to creative potentially innovative products. As the project progresses, we hope to apply the topics learned in class and Creative Confidence to make an impact.
Our project is definitely still “fuzzy” and ambiguous, which is probably a good thing at this point in time. We are still very uncertain of the direction we are going to take, and need to do quite a bit more research before narrowing down our scope. We also decided to add one more problem area (exercising) that we have not previously researched, which can increase the uncertainty of our project.