Delightful Design with DISKA
A new spin on a kitchen chore that’s all washed up
Another year, another team. After last year’s “Ernesto” project, we moved on to round five of our Summer of Thinx internship program. This year’s international interns, Ola and William from Sweden and Ulrike from Germany, came to our thinx lab at denkwerk to get some hands-on experience in IoT and interactive product design. We gave them an assignment as well as the necessary tools, materials, and equipment — and then watched as they spent the next six weeks working together turning their idea into a functional prototype. The 2018 challenge: to make an annoying or tedious everyday activity enjoyable.
When it comes to experiences, why settle?
The brief should come as no surprise. Nearly everything we do at thinx involves the relationships and interactions between people and everyday objects — with the goal of creating meaningful and enjoyable digital and analog experiences. The thinx “raison d’être” is pretty self-explanatory, but if you still find yourself asking why we do the things we do, here’s a perfect analogy from Aarron Walter in an article he wrote for treehouse. He compares a user’s experience with an interface or device to a diner’s culinary experience. And he couldn’t be more spot on! When we go to a restaurant, we hope for (and expect!) more than just an edible meal. We expect the food to be delicious; we want it plated in a way that’s appealing to the eye and we demand great ambiance — the whole shebang! Here, our pleasure is at the center of the entire experience. And if you think about it, shouldn’t the same apply when designing a user’s experience with an interface or device? Our users deserve and expect the best, so why settle for just usable when we could have BOTH useable and pleasurable.
Maslow meets UX
Nearly everyone has heard of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, which basically states that people are first motivated by basic needs (food, shelter) and as these are satisfied they progress to the next tier of more complex needs (love, self-esteem). Because this basic hierarchy is about us humans, it can be applied to (and adapted for) numerous other fields of study. In his book Designing for Emotion, Aarron Walter proposes a 4-tier hierarchy of user needs based on design concepts that closely mirrors that of Maslow.
Walter argues that interfaces or devices must be:
- Functional: They must have an intended purpose or objective(s). Not only this, but they must have the capabilities to fulfill the purpose or objective(s).
- Reliable: If the device can perform the tasks it was designed to do, can it do so reliably? Is its performance consistent?
- Usable: The device should be intuitive. It must also be easy to learn, use and remember.
- Pleasurable: The device should connect with and engage users emotionally. It should bring delight to the experience.
If this example teaches us anything, it’s that an experience is incomplete unless it’s pleasurable. We should always strive to design something remarkable that brings delight, excitement and engagement to people’s lives.
Designing for delight
Unfortunately there isn’t a playbook that outlines exactly what it takes to design for a pleasurable or delightful experience. That would be too easy! We run into the first problem already when we try to define it. What makes something pleasurable and is it the same for all users? Sometimes it’s about invisibility: having a device that “just works” can be delightful. However, giving users a little something extra while satisfying a basic usability heuristic, e.g. providing system feedback, can also be pleasurable.
If we look at the definition of “User Delight” — any positive emotional effect a user may have when interacting with a device or interface — creating an emotional connection seems like a pretty good place to start. Why? First, we humans are emotional beings. Second, emotion plays a significant role in the actual and perceived experience with products. So, if you want to make an experience pleasurable, make it emotional.
This is one of those “easier-said-than-done” situations because human emotions are very complex. It’s extremely difficult to understand and master emotional design, which could be why it often low on the totem pole of priorities — Not because it isn’t important, it’s just so hard to do it right!
“Positive emotional stimuli can build a sense of trust and engagement with your users.” — Aarron Walter
Obviously, we only want to create experiences with positive associations, but it’s a fine line and everything boils down to how well you know your user. The challenge here is uncovering our users’ functional AND emotional needs while taking BOTH into account when designing products for them.
Show your devotion to emotion
So, we’ve established that emotion is a powerful tool in design, but how do you make intrinsically unemotional objects (or devices) emotional? You COULD seek out theories on recognizing and synthesizing emotions so that your object can show emotion and control the emotion of the users, but that’s a slippery slope that can spiral out of control rather quickly. Then again, you could just as well have your object or experiences evoke emotions in the user, for example through surprise, delight, or fun.
- Surprise & Delight: People love to discover treats, easter eggs etc. The good news: you can still offer your users fun without it interfering with functionality or usability. In fact, your users will love you more for it. These surprise discoveries can transform an otherwise mundane task into an experience people will not only enjoy but in anticipation of future surprises, one that they’ll continue to look forward to long-term.
- Play: It’s proven itself time and again in making boring or tedious tasks fun. Just look at all its applications in education and learning. While it can be a great tool in creating an engaging experience, it also has the potential to invoke the opposite. Used sparingly and appropriately, it can enhance an interaction by adding to the fun factor. However, when the play aspect overpowers the functionality or usability it can come across as toy-like or gimmicky and repel rather than engage users.
Moral of the UX Story: never underestimate the power of joy! These engagement methods (and others) can help improve any interaction or user experience…or in the case of our SoT team, help make a tedious task enjoyable.
DISKA to the rescue
So many irritating everyday tasks, so little time to address them all. After doing research and brainstorming on various annoying activities, the SoT team settled on something that nobody likes doing but unfortunately is absolutely necessary: hand-washing dishes. Even those of you with dishwashers have had to get your hands dirty at some point because the dishwasher is full, or the pots and pans aren’t dishwasher safe etc. We’ve all been there, and we all try to make it less miserable — all to no avail, until now.
Introducing DISKA: a plate that turns a drab chore into a fab experience. At a glance, it may look like ordinary dinnerware, but don’t be fooled by its appearance. There’s a lot more going on that meets the eye. Under the plate’s ceramic face and housed deep within the 3-D printed casing, you’ll find DISKA’s “brain” — including an Arduino, sensors (e.g. a gyroscope), the battery, a speaker and an amplifier.
In terms of function, DISKA does what any plate is supposed to do and it looks damn good while doing it. Our interns put a lot of thought and effort into both function and form. The sleek design of the plate makes it a stylish design object that not only acts as a vessel on which food can be served, but adds a fun interactive element when washed — making this dreaded chore pleasurable.
Designing the interaction: Input vs. Output
In designing DISKA, the thinx interns focused on the interaction described above and determined what kind of input (tactile interaction) and output or feedback (audio) the plate would then give users. Let’s focus on the two main elements: movement and sound.
To determine which movements should be programmed into interaction, the interns designed and conducted a study with denkwerk employees to discover patterns and movements in washing dishes. Surprisingly, every person they watched had a unique way of washing up, leading to a broad variety of movements, e.g. spiraling around the plate with a sponge, rubbing, scraping, rinsing, turning it around, using their fingertips to examine its cleanliness. As DISKA should react to all kinds of movements, the decision to add sensors that detect the level of tilt and movement on the plate’s surface was an obvious one.
After investigating how people actually do the dishes, the interns were able to determine the best form of output and decided on audio. Why? In studying the movements, they noticed that other forms of stimuli, e.g. visual (lights, color changes) or tactile (vibrations), would be less effective due to low visibility (soap suds, or being under water) and the larger dishwashing movements themselves (rubbing, tilting etc.).
Plus, sound and music elicit a positive emotional response in users. And if you paid attention earlier, you’ll remember that emotion plays a crucial role in designing delightful experiences. What’s more, sound offers great flexibility with the widest range of sound combinations. Also, these sounds can easily be paired with the individual movements discovered in the user study. Each tilt, turn, or shake is coupled with a short sound, which is the heart of the interaction.
All users have internalized their own particular movement patterns for washing up, and since DISKA dynamically reacts to these, it provides unique audio feedback to every individual user. As washing up often happens post-meal when a user is still riding the serotonin high from eating delicious food, the sounds were selected to keep up this happy mood, while also motivating the user with emotional stimuli. The entire interaction turns into a positive loop of enjoyment: the more a user does the dishes, the more of this positive audio feedback they receive, which in turn makes them want to wash longer and more often. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!
Mission accomplished?
We think so! DISKA is a step in the right direction for designing delightful experiences. Doing the dishes is a chore that everyone hates (because it’s awful!) and makes it more pleasurable. DISKA is whimsical, lighthearted, frivolous fun. It awakens the user’s “inner child” with just enough play to make the activity enjoyable without distracting from the task at hand. It gives unexpected and positive emotional stimuli through a medium everyone can relate to — sound, or if you combine several of them, music. And because of the random and seemingly end combinations of sounds paired with individual movements, it’s an absolute master of the “surprise and delight” engagement method. The experience is personalized for each user and is different with each use creating anticipation for the next experience — thereby ensuring long-term use and engagement.
All in all, it evokes positive emotions in the user and isn’t that what it’s all about? Stay tuned for more delightful experiences from the lab!
