Living room experience| A Design Thinking Case Study

This is a case study of a project to enhance the living room experience by applying the principles of Design Thinking.

Source: unsplash.com

Hi everyone! I’m Apeksha, I’m a graphic designer/ illustrator and an aspiring UX Designer. During my last year of post-graduation, I was introduced to UX design, but it felt very technical and intimidating. After attending Anudeep Ayyagari’s 2-day UX Kickstarter workshop I enrolled in his UX Mastery program. During the workshop, the learning was practical and non-textbook based, resulting in an enjoyable and easy learning experience!

“Design used to be the seasoning you’d sprinkle on for taste; now it’s the flour you need at the start of the recipe.”- John Maeda, Designer and Technologist

About the Project

The solo project was done over 2 weeks. For the project, we were divided into six teams and given an array of options, such as “Home office, kitchen, bathroom, etc.” From the project prompt options, I selected the topic “Living room”.

The reason I chose living room was
It is a place where people spend most of their time chilling, relaxing, watching TV, spending time with family, and whatnot. It gives you a feeling of warmth that you need! Moreover, I think I don’t have a perfect living room So I took it up as a challenge. Here I found an opportunity to put aside my self-bias and practice implementing a user-centric approach to solving problems. It did sound challenging but I took it up.

So in my journey of identifying issues and solving them, I started working on my design thinking project.

Design Thinking Process

The very first question you might ask is-

What is Design Thinking?

According to The Interaction Design Foundation (2022), “Design thinking is a non-linear iterative process which the teams are using to understand the users, the challenges they face and redefine the problems to create more innovative solutions for prototyping and testing”.

It generally involves the following five stages:

• Empathize
• Define
• Ideate
• Prototype, and
• Testing

Source: Google GIFs

Stage 1 — Empathize

One of the primary steps in the design thinking process is empathising with the users. And the key requirement I kept in mind while empathizing with the users which were taught by my mentor, time and again, is

YOU ≠ USER.

Source: dribbble.com

I interviewed 5 users 1v1 who were part of my Bootcamp group, these were conducted conversationally in order to get a good amount of insights and identify potential gaps.

the best way to know your users is to have normal conversations.

With this in mind, I prepared a few questions. Every interview started with a basic introduction of the users, followed by these questions —

Can you describe the structure of your house?

How many people you will say live in your house?

Can you give me insights into what a day in your life looks like when you are at home?

How will you describe your living room and what all does it consist of? For eg — sofa, TV, lamp, coffee table, window (if yes, how many?) etc.

Do you spend most of your time in your living room? If yes, how many hours do you spend there approx? What do you mostly do when you are there?

How often do guests visit your place? How do you say the accommodation is then?

What according to you is the purpose of a living room?

What is the most used space in your living room and why?

How often is your living room being cleaned? And who usually cleans it? Do you face any difficulty while cleaning it?

How will you describe your dream living room?

What do you compromise when guests visit?

Where does everyone dine?

As I progressed from interview to interview, I learned to refine my questions and frame follow-up questions as the interview progressed. As a result, I got a lot of interactive feedback.
During the interview, I made sure I avoid — telling users what I feel can be the solution, asking more WHYs and also not feeding users’ minds with answers.

Get to know my users:

User Personas

Stage 2 —Define

Based on my learning from the empathize stage, the next step was to define a clear problem statement. This will help me with a fixed goal to focus on and keep users’ problems in mind at all times!

To understand and create an actionable plan for the users I had to organize the findings which could be done using problem statements for all the users.

Source: dribbble.com

I came up with around 10 problem statements:

1. Find a way to provide accommodation to guests who stayed for an extended period of time.
Almost all of the users struggle with this point. When guests visit their place for an extended period of time they struggle to accommodate them. They find it difficult to arrange mattresses sometimes or have to sacrifice their comfort and sleep on sofas in the living room.

2. Find a way for users who face problems with less storage space.
Creating an aesthetic living room area whilst making it accessible and adding storage units is one of the biggest challenges faced by most users, and for this reason, they compromise on storage and focus on aesthetics.

3. Find a way for users who face problems with good lighting and ventilation.
Users believe proper ventilation is very necessary for overall mental and physical health as well as bringing positivity to the house.

4. Finding a solution for users who find it difficult to clean underneath sofas, tables, and other items can be a challenge every day.
Users find it hard to clean tough spots below the sofas, tables etc. because of multiple reasons — the broom sometimes does not reach that level or the furniture is too heavy to move.

5. Stains in the living room are a concern for most users who dine there.
3/5 users dine in the living room while watching TV. In order to eat, they sit uncomfortably on their sofas or on the floor.

6. In order to achieve maximum comfort, sofas must be cushioned well enough.
The cushioning on the sofas is not that good, which makes it difficult to sit or sleep on them for extended periods of time. They are bought by users because they match their houses’ aesthetics.

7. Finding discomfort while working from the living room.
Users find it difficult to keep their laptops on their laps while sitting on sofas and working for an extended period of time.

8. Find a solution by which user can easily move their workplace to the living room without much hassle.
Most users work from home and at times they need a change of space. They sometimes like to work from their living room while watching TV. But moving their complete desk to the living is a problem.

9. Find a way to set moods and relax with mood-changing lights.
Users feel on special occasions like a romantic dinner or movie night or when guests come mood setting lights come very handy to set the vibe.

10. Find a way to have affordable portable furniture that doesn’t take up a lot of space.
Users would like to have some pieces of portable furniture in their living room to make their day-to-day jobs easier.

Stage 3— Ideate

Now that I know about my users’ pain points, it was time for me to open up my mind and think about as many ideas as possible. Therefore, for this reason, I used a technique called the Crazy 8 technique.

The crazy 8 technique is — setting a timer for 8 mins and coming up with 8 ideas for each problem. Later, choosing top 3 ideas out of all the solutions as follows.

Source: Google GIFs

Guests Accomodation-
1. Sofa cum bed
2. Extra mattresses inside sofa’s storage
3. Having a Sofa which has drawers can turn into beds
4. Compact Foldable bed that can be kept away after use

Storage issues-
1. Sofa can have drawers/storage space under/inside it
2. TV cabinet with storage space
3. Teapoy can have multiple storage units inside it
4. The armrest of the sofas can be utilised as storage
5. Extendable storage units
6. Extra chairs/stools that have storage space inside them

Good lighting and ventilation-
1. Bigger windows
2. Attached balcony
3. Portable air filter/purifier
4. Decoration in the living room in order to increase lights
5. Light-colored/ net curtains to give an illusion of a bigger area and fresh look.
6. Thermal insulated walls
7. Can use indoor plants

Cleaning tough spots under furniture-
1. Portable furniture. Giving them roller wheels below for easy movement.
2. Flat and sleek broom
3. Cleaning sticky gel which can be applied on brooms/sticks and can be easily put under compact areas.
4. Compact vacuum cleaner
5. Robotic dust cleaner that can easily slide under small areas.
6. Foldable mop

Comfortably eating meals without any worry of stains-
1. Portable tables
2. Attached table extension to the sofa that can be pushed in if not in use
3. Foldable table attached to the sofa

Max comfort sofas-
1. Sponge mattresses/cushions instead of cotton.
2. Cotton sofa covers instead of leather or any other textured material for softness and easy passing of air.
3. Big and multiple cushions for the proper backrest
4. Extendable headboard

Working with ease-
1. Portable work table
2. Table extension from the sofa
3. Headrest to the sofas for resting neck
4. Charging ports inside the sofa armrest
5. Extendable footrest

Mood setting lights-
1. Alexa type multiple color bulb
2. Multiple settings lights put up which work via a app
3. A manual way to change colour and intensity of the light
4. False ceiling with LED strip lights
5. A chandelier which has settings to dim lights, brighten, change color etc which can be controlled via a app

Affordable portable furniture-
1. A custom portable folding table with compartments and a closing on top which can be used for multiple reasons like work, eating, studying etc but also has a storage inside
2. Foldable compact stools/chairs
3. Foldable bed

My top 3 ideas:

💡A sofa with sliding tables and charging ports attached as well as adjustable leg rests — As most people are working from home these days it gets difficult to sit in one place and work. People tend to shift their working spaces according to their mood and also to break the monotony. This is why I picked this idea up to not only help the users I interviewed but also others who can work from there.

💡A portable customised foldable table which has storage — A multipurpose piece of furniture is a must in every household. For studying, working, eating etc. which also has storage unit inside it.

💡Sofa cum bed with wheels for easy movement — As a lot of users face problems in accommodating guests who stay for an extended period which is why I came up with this solution where the sofa can turn into a bed and also has wheels for easy movement.

Of the following three ideas I went with Idea #1

Considering the current work-from-home situation, I saw an opportunity for this idea to be successful. This product will not only give them comfort but also boost their productivity!

Stage 4 — Prototype

Source: Google GIFs

This is the stage where I bring my ideas to the paper and use it for user feedback for understanding the limitations of my design. It was important for keeping the product prototype in the rough stage to spend more time getting feedback and iterating on the prototype multiple times.

Multipurpose sofa prototype sketch

According to interviews the maximum used space or product in almost all of my users’ living rooms was the sofa! The moment I began ideating, I aspired to make a product that minimizes user discomfort!

The sofa has:

- A foldable slide-in table on both sides —
Because of the less width on the sides (armrest), the table is built in a foldable way. It can be opened up completely according to the user’s usage. When the table is opened completely it is secured via the attached link below. and for easy movement of folding it has clips below itself!

- A built-in leg rest —
When working for longer periods of time the legs tend to feel heavy or even get cramps if not in a comfortable position. This can be solved by a built-in leg rest! This is built in a way that the below part of the sofa opens up with a push of a button and goes back in the same way when not in use.

- A cushiony headrest —
It is built in a way to avoid neck aches and maintain body posture.

- Built-in charging ports —
It reduces the hassle of constantly sitting near the charging port or having to use the device uncomfortable because of the length of the charging cord, etc. With a built-in charging port, all of that pain goes away!

Stage 5 — Testing

At this stage, we get to validate the solution with our end-users.

Source: pinterest.com

Having finished the prototyping phase, I presented my ideas to my other group members aka users. My prototype was appreciated by everyone. They felt it was well thought out and it does solve the core problem, but they also offered some constructive feedback that would only help in improving the product.

A few questions raised were —

1. From where is the switch getting the electricity? Is the sofa chargeable? Will there be any batteries inside the sofa? — It has a built-in charging pad that allows the devices to charge.
2. Is there a way in which the switch area is getting covered as it can be dangerous and even kids can put their fingers inside it? — An open and close shutter was added to the revised prototype design.
3. Is the table from both sides? — YES

Revised prototype

💫 Learnings and future intentions

After completing my first design thinking project it is time to summarise my key takeaways which I can implement in my future projects.

With this project, I learned —

• Not to be self-biased with the solution
• Let go of the perfectionist mindset!
• I cannot solve the pain points of every user but I can have a solution which can meet the majority of user needs.
• Understanding the users is the key — IT REALLY IS!
• And finally, UNLEARNING.

This Design Thinking Project allowed me to explore and learn a lot of things more practically.

Thank you for reading! if you liked reading my work let me know in the comments. Feedback is much appreciated.

As a final note, remember that you are a #studentforlife and that no design can exist without thinking.🤘

References:

Here are some references which I used in my project case study.

​​The Interaction Design Foundation. (2022). What is Design Thinking? [online] Available at: <https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking>

How does a charging pad/mat work?

• www.computerworld.com/article/3235176/wireless-charging-explained-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work.html
• https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-do-wireless-charging-mats-work/