IoT-connected Product for Verizon
UX & Product Design | Innovation Nexus Project for Verizon | January - May 2016
Challenge:
Create an IoT-connected (Internet of Things) product/service for Verizon.
Story:
The project was part of Philadelphia University’s industry partnership program (Innovation Nexus Program) with Verizon. The project kick-off meeting was held at DEC center building and led by Verizon representatives, project stakeholders, and PhilaU advisors for this project.The project timeline was for two sprints in which we had check-in meetings and feedback sessions with stakeholders and advisors. At the end of the first sprint, we had to present two concepts at Trade Show review to Verizon and develop the selected concept for the final presentation.
For this project, we had been divided into six multidisciplinary teams which were consisted of 6-7 members from graduate and undergraduate levels. My team consisted of Industrial Design, UX & Interaction Design, Fashion Merchandising, Business Management and Marketing, International Business, and Finance majors.
I joined the team voluntarily to pursue my interest in IoT-connected product design. All team members generally were involved in the process of research, brainstorming, and decision-making sessions, team members had different roles, responsibilities, and level of involvement based on their majors as we moved forward with different phases. For instance, engineers got more involved after iteration phase to create the functional prototype. I was involved with different phases of the process as a UX designer, I helped with UX research analysis, ideation, iteration, app mockup production, and designing the visuals for presentations.
Process:
Research process and methodology:
As we started with a broad idea our first step was to identify the problems. Considering Millennials to be the primary target audience, the goal was to identify their needs in IoT-connected products. To better understand our users, we chose the qualitative methodology to be our major research methods through the design thinking process. Additionally, quantitative data were collected through surveys and interviews.
The research phase was started with problem identification on our first session. As one of two design major graduate students on the team, I also took responsibility for engaging the undergrads with the importance of qualitative research methodology also the importance of starting the process with research. I led the session to start with Post-it note challenge: To write down our ideas and related keywords on the post-it notes and add them to the wall. We ended up our session with creating an affinity diagram to sort them out and identify the pattern and categories we can move forward with.
We chose “home” as the main focused category for our concepts. Continued by a brainstorming session with defining the meaning of home for Millennials which led to the questionnaires for the survey that was conducted to identify the potential needs. After our first check-in with project stakeholders and advisors, we continued our qualitative and quantitative research on millennials as our target audience to identify their needs.
Research Analysis and Findings:
Before the transition to ideation phase, as two graduate design major members of the team, my industrial designer teammate, Colin and I had a couple of meetings to discuss the research findings and reviewed the direction of the project and planned for the next phase.
We discussed the results of different qualitative research methods, For creating persona profiles, I started mapping them out on the whiteboard while we were discussing research findings. Additionally, we reviewed the deliverable materials and defined the presentation strategy for one of the major milestones of the project: The trade show presentation. Later on, we shared and reviewed the results with other team members and made the final decision about the deliverables and presentation for our two initial concepts: Help Hub and Smart Mirror.
Research findings:
- Millennials are learning how to live an “adult” life by trial and error
- They want help to live the most efficient life they can
- Looking for a system that consolidates existing connected devices
Persona Profiles:
For the Tradeshow Review, based on my idea to create an interactive demo of our concept to show the user experience, based on the scenario that we developed together, we presented the story of our main concept, the interactions, features, and functionality. Although our both concepts were approved by Verizon, we had to choose one. So we decided to develop the Help Hub that we believed would be more practical and impactful for millennial’s need. As we focused on Help Hub, we developed the refined mission statement and start developing its branding and business model.
Mission Statement:
Iteration to Prototype
Based on the help hub mission and aligned with our branding, we chose the name Unison and I created the visual identity and its logo based on that.
The next step was iteration and detail design. As the design team, we were involved with iteration, other team members were developing the business model and engineers were started designing the prototype after the initial iteration phase was completed.
As we moved forward, we discovered a need for developing an app to be part of the system which I started sketching out before digitalizing it. We discussed the first iteration for the features map and wireframe over our design sessions and I created the Axure app mockup.
Key takeaways & Achievements:
- Aside from the fact that I gained a valueble experience being involved on this project and inspired in many ways, I've been challenged many times, as well. The most important takeaway was to realize qualitative research methodology is not always the taken as serious as qualitative methodology and it's sometimes essential to defend it and prove the importance of it. Inspired by this matter, I wrote a piece to address my experience. (Read "Challenges of Design Research" on Medium)
- Our product was one of three selected products by Verizon and I was honored to be one of four people from my teams’ representatives to attend 2016 Verizon and Philadelphia University Celebration of Innovation’s Gala to representing our concept.
