Product Development during the Covid Pandemic — Light-Up Focus Tree
One of my Projects from my Junior Year in College
Hey there! I’m Hope, a UX designer and I’ve just closed off my Junior year at The University of Michigan. To say the least, this year has been interesting. I’ve taken on a lot of new project and opportunities and learned a lot about myself as a designer. Surprisingly time has passed slowly yet quickly at the same time. Working on projects and collaborating virtually for this whole year has been difficult yet at the same time has allowed me to take on more things—such as joining Shift!
One of the projects i’ve worked on include developing and prototyping this light-up focus tree with a student team—we actually won some $5k for this project so we’ll be finding ways to iterate further and eventually file a patent or license this!
Evertree— A light up Focus Tree
For a semester long product development class, me and my team of 4 other members created evertree, a hand crafted study tool that reimagines guided productivity sessions as it lights up over time according to user focus duration.
Our product integrates with an app inspired by a pomodoro style timed-studying technique. It features soft led lights that reflect focus duration, a display with time remaining in the focus session, hand twisted copper wire and in the back of the display, and a wireless charging slot to place your phone.
The user would start the focus session using the app, set their phone into the slot in charging slot in the back and see the tree light up as they study. As timed breaks come along, the tree vibrates lightly and the lights gently pulse to prompt the user to take a break.
Our team started iterating solutions to a prompt related to increasing self-sufficiency. We had some trouble in the beginning because of how broad this prompt was. To help us find an initial direction to go in, we did market analysis and brainstormed ideas. we conducted interviewed with people of all ages within our networks on a broad level to try understanding their general pain-points.
After multiple rounds of ideations and idea generation and getting feedback from our peers, we eventually diverged and converged into this focus plant idea. We created sketches and low fidelity prototypes during the development process, experimenting with the shape and design of the tree.
After iterating on these low fidelity prototypes, we moved to CAD and created an initial plastic 3D print of the base structure. We ordered components from Amazon consisting of led fairy lights (we initially tried using programmable led lights but they were much too bulky to use), a wireless charging coil, a digital clock (that we took apart to use just the display) and a vibration motor. We tried finding cheaper components and following that scrappy mindset, we sourced the moss from one of our teammate’s pants, and collected pebbles outside. Lastly, I created a high fidelity app prototype to pair with this physical product (You can check it out here!).
Finally, we assembled all high fidelity components consisting of a copper wire tree we twisted ourselves, and a new wood filament 3D printed base. Inside the base was where we stored all our components including the charger, time display, and vibrating motor. Unfortunately, we had to use fairy lights and controlled them externally/manually rather than having it programmed into the base.
Throughout this whole process, we struggled with actually coming up with the product concept. In the beginning stages, we had multiple product ideas we wanted to try out— from a digitally integrated charcuterie/cutting board to a one-a-day magnetic puzzle board—we were lost as to where we should focus on.
Secondly, we had a hard time narrowing down exactly what features and functions we wanted our product to have. Did we want it to play music? What kind of a phone dock would work best? What material would the tree and lights be made of? How would we theoretically manufacture these elements and what would be most realistic?
Lastly, we were running into feasibility constraints into the later stages of costing our product and thinking about manufacturing constraints—We had a lot of features and components we wanted to include which drove our final pricing up. We also were conflicted with the cost of producing the actual copper tree component. In our final prototype, we hand cut and twisted individual copper wires together to craft the tree. We had considered the process of automating this but ultimately decided it would have to be hand twisted, leading to higher labor costs. Our final product ended up being marked at $95.00 with a total unit cost calculated to be $42.61, giving us a margin of $52.39.
What helped our team move forward with indecision or challenges was going back to our research and rooting our decisions in data that was backed up by our prior findings. We also consulted a lot in our peers and instructors and their expertise helped to guide us as well.
I learned a lot about the product development process—while it is very similar to the UX design process, the added considerations to creating the CAD and actually constructing a product was something new for me. Thinking about production costs, materials and what would be feasible brought in a more engineering and business perspective that I appreciated. Additionally, working in a team of other motivated students with their own diverse skillsets was rewarding—where one of us might have lacked, there was always another member who was capable of teaching the rest of us.
As mentioned earlier, our team ended up winning a digital voting Trade Show where an audience choses to vote/buy the product they want. Out of the 4 other product teams, our team had won the majority of the votes with 707/964 voters “buying” our product, earning us a net margin of $7,120,019. While our team did celebrate this result, we also recognize that spending imaginary digital money is not accurate of what might happen in reality. In addition to winning the Trade Show, our team won $5,000 to help us further develop this product. Moving forward, our team is currently discussing how to best use this funding, and how we can improve and possibly license our product.
This is the link to our product website with a nifty demo video we filmed ourselves!
