This week the group I was a part of helped come up with multiple types of cars, the specific subset of people who may drive that car and issues they may face that could be solved by a smart interface on the dashboard similar to the one pictured below.
The car we were focused on was a minivan with the target group being single parents with younger kids. Kids can easily be a distraction so we wanted to come up with an idea that could free up the parents from policing their children and let them focus on driving.
Our solution was to have 2 screens on the back of the front seats with the option for augmented reality to play games on. We decided that this would free up the driver, although we did give optional controls and lock options for the driver in the front seat to control what the kids can and cant do as well as a smaller display screen in the front to monitor backseat activity on their screens.
What I learned through this process was that everyone is going to have different ideas about how to approach a problem and organizing those ideas is going to be important to incorporate some or all of the ideas for a better final product. The use of so many sticky notes seemed wasteful at first but it did help to be able to move each idea and thought individually to build an outline for how we would approach the problem it made it very clear what the issues were and how we could address them.
Through this project i could see myself using the techniques later on both in this class and for problems that i have a fair amount of background knowledge on. The use of sticky notes was very good for basic ideas that we knew a lot about and could easily visualize without any further though towards them, the level of what we did seems better for a basic understanding of the problem and what our solution would be. This type of problem solving method in the form we used in class would not work as well for something that needs more thought into it or something that would require more research, however overall I think that the form of exploring ideas using a lot of sticky notes and building off of other peoples ideas is a great tool for us as prospective HCDE students. I hope to be able to use these basic techniques to build my own skill set and eventually even use these skills in my future job in design.
Sources:
Raymond, S. (2013, July 25). 2013 Tesla Model S: Electric Car, no Compromises. Retrieved April 3, 2017, from http://www.guideautoweb.com/en/articles/21301/2013-tesla-model-s-electric-car-no-compromises/
How to Avoid Being Driven Mad on Your Driving Holiday. (2014, March 6). Retrieved April 3, 2017, from http://happymom.info/2014/03/06/how-to-avoid-being-driven-mad-on-your-driving-holiday/#more-948