3 Months Capstone Project • End-to-end product designer • work with hua-shao
The project started with a discussion about both of our trip back home during the pandemic. We all had the feeling of missing aspects of our parents' life. Therefore, we designed FamiBoard - an interaction board for providing the sense of presence, connectedness, and intimacy for family under remote context.
In this project, the rationale behind each design decision were figure out by the debate conclusions we both agreed on. In this project, I ideate & test the product concept and created both low-fi physical prototype (FamiLight) and hi-fi interactive prototype (mostly on interactions).
Wait! What's wrong with the current solution?
"My family call at the agreed time. Because the time is limited, trivial but interesting things are neglected."
"The conversations dragged when we use text message and most of the time the they were cut off by other discussions."
Secondary Research
I kicked off the project with reviewing academic papers about remote communication within family. The research focused on how transnational families communicate, and how current technology support synchronous and asynchronous remote communication among family members.
Interviews
To contextualize the problem space, we interviewed 3 parents and 5 adult children. We asked interviewees about their remote communication styles, frequency, and topics, and why they liked or disliked specific experience with their parents/children under remote context.
We synthesized the research findings into personas for parent and adult child.
Increase contact frequency while not being too intrusive
Encourage parents and children to Initiate various topics
Balancing feeling of intimacy & need of boundaries between parent and children
We brainstormed 4 product ideas and reached out to 7 users for concept testing. During the testings, I asked questions about how people envision the idea and whether the idea would work within their family.
Because each of the concept above will lead us to very different solution space, we decided to refine concept 01 & 04 and bring the lo-fi physical prototype to the users. We asked users to body storm with the prototype and think out loud during the process.
FamiLight is a product with LED matrix light connected with a communication app. The smart light allows users to set up communication routine, customized emoji, and record voice messages.
FamiBoard is a digital board which allows users to create notes, share pictures, and draw anything on the freeform section while prompt users with conversation topics in the widget section,
We listed out the challenge to be coped with in order to move the design forward. These objectives are: (1) Justify the suitable hardware elements for Famiboard. (2) Justify the layout of Famiboard at default state. (3) Understand whether the interaction flows are intuitive to users. Conducting usability tests by wizard of oz methods was the best options to solve these problems.
Share anything interesting about your surroundings
Prompt by the old memories and share them within seconds
Send handwriting to express your feelings
Give quick and timely response with default elements
Add signature on the content you've shared
Share your voice to express what you have in mind
Share the seasonal or holiday outfit by updating your avatar
Add emoji besides your avatar to show your emotion status
Even though we are designing based on the same research results, each of us has very different opinions. We took a lot of time debating about our proposals and in the end always realized there is no perfect solution. Communication is the key that helps us make the decisions and move the design forward without missing any context.