As we thought about home, many of us thought about family. Some of us from the department have just left living with family to attend grad school. How was the family household evolving? What could family households of the future look like?
MY TASK
Attitudinal Research
Literature Review
Trend Research
User Interviews
Research Synthesis
Journey Mapping
Ideation
Wireframing
Screen Flows
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Video Filming
TOOLS
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Fusion 360
Final Cut Pro
CLASS
Ideation Studio
MHCI+D Program
with Yuna Chong, Anshuman Dahar, Rahmat Raji
TIME FRAME
12 weeks, Fall 2021
Bean is a primarily voice-controlled chef that guides household members through a shared cooking experience with AR projection for visual support. It is designed to help encourage more face-to-face interaction between household members.
Interaction is a core part of being human and we need it to fulfill our social needs. As families have school and work becoming even more demanding, personal technology has offered itself as the easy way out. Living most of our life online is increasingly being used as a diversion, a way to unwind, or simply a means of entertainment.
We noted differences in how people were spending time together. Some were more active, such as in shared activities requiring concentration on what someone is doing or saying, and some were more passive, such as sitting in the same room together perhaps engaging in independent activities.
Method 1
QUALITATIVE & QUANTITATIVE DATA
By performing in-person interviews and conducting surveys, we learned the existing family dynamic in the household. Findings included conducting users' interviews and observations at home. Some of the learnings are shared below.
Method 2
ATTITUDINAL RESEARCH & TREND REVIEWS
Speaking of electronic devices, what type of devices do families use in their homes? How long do they use it? We studied each user's screen time on their devices and knew different devices had different effects.
While personal electronics and the internet have allowed us to connect with people in far corners of the world, we also felt it was starting to replace face-to-face interactions with people in our direct physical proximity. Like family members living together.
Looking into electronic devices, what type of devices do families use in their homes? Different devices had different effects. According to our participants and Pew Research Center, generally, TVs, speakers, and kitchen appliances promoted shared experiences or interactions, contrary to phones and laptops.
Cooking and eating were overarching themes in many discussions and interviews about how families spent time together, along with spending time in the kitchen and dining area. We found most of the activities participants described were in the top-left quadrant (active, analog). Analog means they did not necessarily include the use of any electronic devices.
In parallel to interviews, we did literature review to explore reports of academic and industry researchers and found a plethora of evidence pointing to the well-being benefits of spending time with family, and the risks the internet and digital experiences posed on family time.
We also noticed a ton of literature on meals specifically. The consensus was that there were a lot of benefits related to family members eating regular meals together.
Focusing on mealtime, we look into this activity holistically and see where the opportunities can fit in:
REFINED STATEMENT
How might we leverage meals to encourage more active face-to-face interactions between family members, and by doing so creates more opportunities for interpersonal connection?
After our studies, my team and I wanted to make the most of cooking meals to encourage busy families to interact with and create more opportunities for emotional connection. We based our designs to deliver on the following key.
HUMAN
Promote active face to face participation in shared activities
MEANINGFUL
Create opportunities for two-way emotional connection
UNIVERSAL
Do not assume gender/ title based roles within the household
In order to make sure we weren’t influencing each other during the initial concept phase, each member of our group generated 30+ individual ideas which responded to our design challenge. When we came together we affinity mapped these selected ideas into 5 different categories of different mealtimes.
We went through a few rounds of iteration using the prompt and prototyping to refine the concept with research outcomes in-line with our project goals. Below is a revised and simplified information architecture and flow which focused on a specific dish that the family would be cooking together along with the i/o map.
In the prototype building process, we did several tests to evaluate our concept with Bean to see if it works while cooking and even more, bring out more face-to-face interaction and emotional communication. In order to assist in voice interaction for the chefs. I came up low-fidelity spatial UI wireframe mapping that could help with visual support while in the kitchen.
We concluded a few scenarios from Voice User Interaction that how Bean would interact with family members in the kitchen.
When there is a silence during cooking time, Bean would provide activities such as Guess-that-song, guess the favorite movie, and trivia helped calm nerves and bring the chefs together. We uncovered that they were especially effective while the chefs were waiting for food to cook and small competitions make the experience fun.
Aligned set of underlying principles describing the most important elements of our solution.
Bean is a primarily voice-controlled chef that guides household members through a shared cooking experience with holograms projection for visual support. It is designed to help encourage more face-to-face interaction between household members.
2022 Eric Chen - Images and content may not be used without written permission. All rights reserved.®