Designing Connected Products
CIID Summer School, Kochi — Week 1 of 3
The first three weeks of December 2018 attending the CIID Summer School at Kochi has been one of the most information-filled week for me in a long time. My hope with these posts are to share my learnings and experiences from my time spent there, and help the reader get an idea about the Summer School that happens yearly across various locations. Each week was like a crash course in their respective topic and unlike the diversity in the subjects of the workshops, one thing that remained constant through all three weeks was the design process.
Research > Brainstorm > Ideate > Create > Test > Repeat
In introduction to the week, we talked about the recent calamity that struck Kerala, and how people from all over the country came together to help in the time of need. We had a few people amongst us, who were a part of the rescue operations during the Kerala floods, sharing their experience and learnings. Inspired by this, our design briefs for the first week were to find solutions that can help in such situations of emergency.
Week 1 — Day 1:
My first week started with Designing Connected Products, taught by Andrew Spitz and Ruben van der Vleuten of Frolic Studios and former students of CIID. The course started off with basic introductions, getting assigned to a team and being given a common goal for the week — we had to design a solution that could potentially help reduce all flood related fatalities.
As our first task, we had to pick and make a list of potential problem areas while listening to people who endured the hardships of the Kerala floods and few who were actively helping out in the rescue operations. Each item on this list was called a How-Might-We(HMW). After a few quick rounds of shortlisting, categorising and voting amongst the team members, we were left with one ‘How-might-we’ per team that we needed to find a solution for.
The problem point my team agreed upon was that during a flood, most sources of drinking water get contaminated leading to fatalities either due to consumption or lack of availability of drinking water. What we set out to conceptualise was a way to provide a solution to make drinking water available during a flood. In the interest of time, our only source for user research was the internet. We started looking for existing solutions that help provide clean water and/or what are the existing easy home-remedies to help find inspiration for our solution.
Using that knowledge, we started with a 3-step storyboard for a product that could help answer our selected HMW. The storyboard talked about the features of the product and how it would be helpful for a person in need. With three people in my team, each one of us created our own versions of a plausible solution and features — without bothering about the technical feasibility at the moment. Another quick round of voting later we finalised a list of features that would be included in our final product prototype.
After mulling over multiple options, our concept titled “Project SIP” was to create a handy water filter that fits varied water outlets. An LED indicator tells the filter capacity and when it needs to be replaced. The connected app — has a tutorial to help you set up the filter, a dashboard that allows you to check filter capacity and a few other details. It also has a GPS functionality that can help rescue personnel locate you in time of need or other people who have the same product to locate you in case their filter runs out.
Next we were introduced to what is called ‘Little Bits’. Little Bits are small Lego type magnetic connecting circuit components. Each bit is distinctly colour-coded depending on their functionality, i.e. power bits were blue, input controls pink, connect/wire was orange and output green. You could create a basic circuit in a matter of seconds with just initial understanding of what goes where. After playing around with them for a bit, the class was able to use these bits to create a circuit that would work for their prototype.
The second half of the day was spent trying to create a housing for the circuits and a basic structure of the product. With the initial sketch in mind, a rudimentary prototype wasn’t too tough to make using cardboards and some scraps lying around. While two of us in the team worked on making the physical product, one worked on sketching out the screens of what our eventual app would look like. So, by the end of the first day we had a rough prototype of a physical product and sketches of the mobile screen ready.
For Day 2, we had to get ready to refine and have a more finished-looking product.
Week 1 — Day 2:
Arduino, I knew required some level of programming and the last time I ever did any was 8 years back. With the looming dread over how challenging the day was going to be, once Ruben started explaining how Arduino functions — it wasn’t as tough. For our convenience, Ruben and Andrew had a Frolic-Studios-custom Wi-Fi enabled breadboard that didn’t require us to understand circuit diagrams and make manual connections. These had pin-type connections for a few set of electronic components like switches, LEDs, audio outputs — any basic interaction that could be required for our concepts. Simultaneously, we were also introduced to Blynk app and how to utilise the app to remotely trigger actions from our Arduino.
For our concept, we required a really basic interaction — an LED indicator that goes from green to red to indicate the lowering filter capacity. So, we picked a slider control, a rotary control and a few LEDs. Our first task was to get the LEDs to function as we wanted it. With that in place, we then coded the interaction on Blynk — which allowed us to control the LEDs remotely. Achievement unlocked — we had successfully made something functioning on Arduino.
On to FabLabs (Fabrication Lab) now — to find the right items to put a more finished product together. The next two days was a mad rush trying to get access to the laser cutter or the 3D printer, more so because of everyone’s excitement of using it for the first time. Seeing one of your creation take shape in front of your eyes was definitely a treat. To get our ideas 3D printed, we were introduced to a website called Tinkercad that allows users to create 3D model in a very easy way. It is a simple online tool that helps create 3D shapes by putting together basic geometrical shapes.
Summing up the different tasks achieved during the day 2, we learnt basics of Arduino and how to pair it with Blynk. We learnt TinkerCad and how-to setup a 3D printer. People who didn’t have access to Illustrator, learnt how to create vector designs on vectr.com and makercase.com so they could laser cut parts of their product or boxes from wooden or acrylic boards. We also started work on Proto.io to create a high-fidelity prototype of the mobile application that would eventually be paired with our physical product.
First two days of each week were always packed with learning. And the following two days were spent on converting those learnings into a physical product.
Week 1 — Day 3 and Day 4:
Now that we had gone over the basics of most of the required applications, our task now was to put together a product and a pairing app. Our end goal for the week was to be able to convey the idea of the solution with a small video narrative. We couldn’t possibly ponder over and consider technical feasibility in a week’s time, but the purpose of the week was to understand how to convey our concept even without an actual functional product.
It took us almost the whole two days to put together the physical product. Going by our design we got the top and the base of the filter 3D printed. With the benefit of having a product designer on my team, after several trials and iterations we had a wooden plank laser cut a certain way to create a cylinder. It sounds fairly achievable but getting the right cut without compromising the strength of the board — and seeing the effort my teammate put in getting it just right was commendable. Meanwhile, I worked on getting the relevant screens ready for the mobile application.
On Day 4, we were also introduced to video making. One of the most important tools to convey the purpose of your product or to make sure you’re on the same page as stakeholders — videos. For our presentation, we decided on a list of important interactions for our product and made small snippets that conveyed the purpose of our app along with a narration.
While what we did seemed like just prototyping, we do get an understanding on how to approach a project that requires connected products.
Week 1 — Day 5:
The last day for all three weeks were the same — Last minute preparations for the presentation, watching everyone before you present their excellent concepts while you wait nervously for your turn, followed by your 4-minute presentation itself. A week’s learning covered in a mere 4 minutes. Trying to squeeze in details about the product, key learnings and our experience of the week in that short period of time was in itself a daunting task but when you manage to intrigue people and walk back to your seats with friendly nods and a cheerful applause — the sense of accomplishment is really fulfilling at the end of a long week.
In retrospect for the first week, going through the different steps of designing a connected product I realise a few things:
- A well-coordinated team makes it easy to develop a prototype good enough to convey one’s idea, in a mere week’s time.
- Having used so many new technologies, I can confidently say that the learning curve for a lot of new technology isn’t too steep.
- We learnt a few things about making connected products, but utilising this learning in our daily work is a challenge. To really benefit from this session, we need to modulate our existing design process according to relevance.
- It is very necessary to commit to the each step of the design process — to overcome the tendency of finding solutions in the requirement gathering phase was the biggest takeaway from this week.
One thing that did bother me though, was that we didn’t cover a lot of IoT devices even though the course was about designing connected products. But considering the nature of the course, the variety of participants and the limitation of 5 days — the course touched upon the basics of a wide array of topics, introduced the concept of design thinking and taught us how to approach a design problem, rather than finding and creating full-fledged solutions to known problems.
With a lot of similarities in the design process over the duration of the next two weeks — I will try to speak more about my learnings than the process going forward in my posts to follow.