A Design Thinking Project Case Study

Enhancing The Kitchen Experience

Hello,

I am Mansi Singh Chauhan, interested in UX Design and wanted to learn more about it. So, I enrolled for UX mentorship program by UX Anudeep Aiyyagari at growth school. And as a part of this design thinking project, I was asked to select one area related to the house and I decided on the kitchen Area.

What is Design thinking?

In layman’s terms, Design Thinking is a process that helps us in understanding a user’s problem in a detailed way and come up with a solution that improves their experiences, takes feedback on the solution, and makes corrections as per the need. And these steps will go on and on until we come up with a solution that provides a better experience to the users. We also need to keep in mind that no single solution can be termed the best solution as there is always a scope for improvement.

Design Thinking Process includes five stages —

1. Empathy 2. Define 3. Ideation 4. Prototype 5. Test

STAGE 01 — EMPATHY: Understanding the user’s Perspective

At this stage, we were supposed to do user research to understand the core problem of the users with respect to the problem area. Initially, the empathy stage was a bit difficult for me because I was not having any knowledge of how to take interviews and what is the correct question to ask the user. But my mentor Anudeep said remember no question is wrong you can ask any question related to the problem area. So keeping that in mind I prepared some user interview questions to gain some insight into my users and their pain points.

INTERVIEW FOCUS POINTS:

I focused on the following points while preparing my questionnaire to conduct the user interview:

1. Their interaction with the space
2. Likes and dislikes of the area
3. Gaps in that area

The question prepared are as follows:

1. A brief introduction about yourself.
2. How often do you cook and what problem do you face while cooking?
3. What is the thing that you like in your kitchen?
4. Do you feel too much hot while cooking? ( having proper ventilation)
5. What is the one thing you want to change in your kitchen?
6. How do you organize things in the kitchen?
7. Where is your kitchen located in your house and how do you feel about its location?
8. Does the kitchen have proper lighting? What kind of lighting do you prefer in your kitchen?
9. Is your kitchen have enough space?
10. Is the kitchen have filtered water, and tap water supply near the cooking area to make things easier?
11. Sink size? Is your sink get clogged, if yes then what do you do to unclog the sink?

During the interview, I got a lot of intuitions and insights from the user, their likes, dislike, gaps problem areas, and root causes.

USER 1

USER 2

USER 3

USER 4

USER 5

STAGE 02—Define Stage: Need to frame problem statements based on what we observed from the Empathize stage.

In this stage, I went through the insights from the previous stage. Focused mainly on the problems they faced.

1. Small sink in the kitchen.

Reason: Since the sink is smaller in size, it becomes difficult to keep all dirty dishes together in sink.

2. No proper space for cutting vegetables in the kitchen.

Reason: Since no proper space to cut vegetables in kitchen, have to cut vegetables in dinning area which is little inconvenient.

3. Have to cut vegetables outside the kitchen.

Reason: Beacuse feels congested in the kitchen.

4. Don’t have proper furniture in the kitchen.

Reason: Since don’t have proper furniture in kitchen, no proper place to keep the stuffs.

5. Sink gets clogged very often.

Reason: Sinks get clogged because of oil, grease, food residue, etc., and have to clean very often which is very irritating.

6. Kitchen location is not a good place.

Reason: kitchen is on ground floor and bedroom is on first floor, so it become inconveninet.

7. Not having enough space in the kitchen.

Reason: More than two people in kitchen feels congested.

8. Stove burners not working.

Reason: Burners not working hence it become very time consuming to cook food.

9. Poor Ventilation.

Reason: Due to poor ventilation in kitchen it feel very hot in kitchen and at the time of tadka there is lot of smoke in kitchen.

Now that the problems have been compiled, it is easier to start to think upon the solutions.

STAGE 03— Ideate Stage: This is the stage when we want to start thinking of solutions to the users’ problems.

We were introduced to a method called “The Crazy 8” during the Bootcamp. To put it simply, I had to come up with 8 ideas in 8 minutes by timing ourselves. I tried using that method here and to be very honest it didn’t work out well for me. I wasn’t able to find 8 solutions to every problems so, keeping the core goal of understanding the process I went on with my project.

💡Ideas

1. Having a chimney in the kitchen can solve ventilation problem, smoke problem.
2. Air purifier in the kitchen can solve ventilation and smoke problem.
3. Can have a window in the kitchen if possible for ventilation.
4. Can use plants and herbs in the kitchen.
5. Can have an extractor fan that eliminates hot air.
6. For sink Clogging user can keep the dustbin near the sink and can throw the waste in the dustbin.
7. Can have an automatic suction sink that pulls everything that is stuck in the sink.
8. User can use a hand foldable sink and can adjust the volume of the sink.
9. Can use a portable burner.
10. User can have a mini refrigerator in the kitchen which will not occupy much space.
11. User can have a portable and foldable table for cutting vegetables.

Among all the problems and their solutions, I had to shortlist the top 3 ideas.

💡Top idea 1: Having air purifier in the kitchen.

Reason: During the interviews, I felt that most of the interviewees told me about the ventilation problem. I choose this because air purifier can solve problem like ventilation, smoke and can decrease the temperature of the kitchen. I choose this because this product don’t require much space because user also having space issue.

💡Top idea 2: User can have a hand foldable sink, can adjust the volume of sink.

Reason: I choose this because user is having a small sink, he cannot put all the dirty dishes together inside the sink, which is very messy according to him.

💡Top idea 3: Can have portable and foldable table for cutting vegetables.

Reason: User not having any proper space or platform to cut vegetables, so has to cut vegetables in the dining area. According to him, if he had a proper table or platform to cut vegetables that would be easy for him.

STAGE 04 — Prototype: This is the stage where you actually make a representational model of the solution you came up with.

In this stage, I had to select 1 idea among the top 3 ideas from the previous stage, and prototyping for it.

I had 3 main ideas out of which only one had to be selected. I went with the top 1st idea for prototyping that was

“Having an Air purifier in the kitchen”

Problem this product will solve like ventilation, Smoke and smell of the kitchen. And this product does not required much space and it can be kept anywhere in the kitchen. It can also be kept near stove area so that user does not face smoke problem.

I designed this prototype based on no. of user’s majority problem and i hope it will definitely helpful for the users.

STAGE 05 — Test: This is the stage where we take feedback from the users of prototype we made.

In this stage we present our Prototype to the users, communicate and finally we acquire their feedbacks…

‘Here focus is observe the conversation and note the feedback at last but not to interact between the conversation.’

I got this feedback from the team members as below👇:-

User 1: She like the idea but she has issue with with size of product, she feels that it should be a little bit smaller in size.

Users 2 and 3: In my prototype, I have only shown height and width but they also want to know about depth. According to them intakes are from bottom but in my prototype intake are from somewhere optimum. And if we want purified air to stay in the kitchen then the purified air outtake on the top doesn’t actually a good application, as it will go out and mix with the bad air again.

User 4: He wants to have fan regulator button so that the user can regulate the speed of the fan.

User 5: No feedback.

Revised prototyping:

So, this is the new prototype I made based on feedback given by the users.

Learnings and takeaways

• This project helped me understand the Design Thinking process in detail; I learnt that the best way to get better is by doing and application
• I am not the user so don’t be biased.
• Learnt that every solution has room for improvement, no solution is perfect
• Understanding and empathizing with the users helps one understand the what gaps exist and provide optimal solutions
• It is the job to a designer to dig deeper and find the right problems the user might be facing

#studentforlife

In the end, I would say Thank you, for giving your valuable time to reading my case study. If you want to give any feedback, it will get more value and guidance for me. Please like and share your valuable feedback in the comment section.🙏

✍️Contact me: chauhan.singh.mansi@gmail.com or LinkedIn