Download Final_Project_review.pdf (279kb)
The last project aims to come up with a problem and its solution. This is much like creating a product for a business. This makes it very fun.
I found it particularly difficult to come up with the problem. There are just too many possible problems and I did not know where to start from. My group deduced that many of the problems that we encounter in real life are usually worked around, thus blinding us from realizing there is a problem. We, or myself, only see a problem when I cannot solve it and the problem still persist right in front of me!
Luckily, one of our members mentioned about napping in school.
Before the problem of napping in school, we proposed a problem of carrying heavy things, especially for ladies. However, after laddering interviews and probing the ladies, we found that the root of the problem & its suggested solution was not attractive enough for the project. Hence we switched ideas to napping in school. This showed us that laddering interviews can be a very good way to obtain rich details of the problem & its rough solution.
During the laddering interviews, it was quite encouraging raise solutions to the problem of napping. We know the problem, but not the root problem that entails the solution to it. It was during one of my interviews that I had a spark and asked these questions:
- Do you like to hug your bolster when you sleep?
- Do you like to keep yourself warm during your sleep?
- What makes a good sleep for you?
Raising the right questions, questions that asks how to make them happier or feel better regarding the problem, will help to give light to the solution. This I feel is one of the most important things I have learnt in this project. We cannot just keep shooting questions and accepting any answer that we think it might be the solution. In addition, we did not prepare ourselves the factors affecting the problem, as we did earlier for assignment 3, thus it was difficult to find the actual “root” solution.
Our end product is a physical product rather than an informational web site. Many of the principles taught in lecture can be applied to product design. I found that during interview sessions and testing of our prototype are the times that revealed more questions for our designs. They were questions which were not previously thought of, such as hygiene issue (laying the head on the cushion), the use of different materials such as zip (hair might be caught in the zip). The reasons why these questions weren’t raised earlier is because of the lack of prototype and some conceptualization of the final product. We really appreciated these comments and took them into consideration for our final design.
Many people loved the idea of our product, Naptop. They thought it was cool and why no one thought of it before. This comments made me very happy, and it showed me that this can be used in marketing and entrepreneurial context!
A simple problem can be solved with the simplest solution: Naptop.
Below are pictures of our High-fidelity Prototype.
An inflated Naptop. The top part is the pillow.
The "Clean" or underside of the pillow. This is where our heads rest on.
Where we can put our laptops in
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