How can be a normal house terrace be a better place for users?
A design thinking case study
We all want to be remembered for something new, something great; and the quest for that “something new”, something the world has never seen before, often leads a designer into the “Novelty Trap”.
The Novelty Trap occurs when we try to push our limits to solve a problem a user is facing by focusing too much on designing something new and not giving enough attention to the resources available with us now which can be brought to a very good use to solve the problem.
For example, Zomato and Swiggy did nothing new. We used to order the food earlier by directly calling the nearby restaurants. These businesses just made the process very simple and scaled it to a large variety of restaurants as compared to before. Similarly we have been getting taxies before there were Ola or Uber. These services just simplified the whole process and thus solved major problems for the users.
Similarly, in this case study I have tried to put forth a solution as simple as possible which still manages to solve the problem I was told to focus upon.
Objective
The task assigned to me was to “Improve the user experience of the Terrace” for the users and I followed the Design Thinking approach to tackle this problem.
Approach
Initially the obvious urge was to design something phenomenal, but the goal was to solve the problem and not to be a crazy inventor. So, in this case study I have tried to make use of the products already existing in the market to try to improve the user experience of the users.
Like every Design Thinking project this case study is divided into 5 stages which also form the basic pillars of the Design Thinking process.
These steps are:
1) Empathize
This is the initial and most crucial step of the framework. It prepares the necessary ground for all that would be done to solve the problem someone is working upon. It is an effort to understand the user in and out through research by empathizing with the user to gather all the information possible related to the problem one is trying to solve.
In this stage I interviewed 5 people from the group which I was a part of. The instructions were to interview people within the group itself and not anyone from outside the group.
The whole process was divided into 5 steps:
1) Preparing a questionnaire.
Prepared a questionnaire to know about the user and their interaction with the area under consideration. Tried to keep the questions conversational and open ended. The questions are listed down below:
1. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
2. How often do you visit your terrace?
3. How big is your terrace?
4. What all do you see on your terrace?
5. Is there anything you like about your terrace?
6. What do you dislike about your terrace?
7. And why do you like what you like?
8. Why do you not like what you don’t like?
9. What else do you use your terrace for?
10. What else would you like to use your terrace for?
11. What do you see from your terrace in all the directions?
12. What is the location of your house?
13. What do you like about the location of your house?
14. What do you not like about the location of your house?
15. How is the pollution level in your area?
16. How green are your surroundings?
17. How noisy are your surroundings?
18. How do you find access to your terrace?
19. How many people are there in your family?
20. How many people are there in your building?
21. How many floors are there in your building?
22. When are you most likely to visit your terrace?
23. How often do you visit someone else’s terrace?
24. What do you like or dislike about their terrace?
25. How much time does it take to reach your terrace?
26. Do you suffer from any kind of pain that can hinder your movement?
27. What is your favourite season?
28. What food cuisine do you enjoy the most?
29. What is your everyday screen time?
30. What is your daily schedule?
31. Do you exercise?
32. If yes, where do you exercise and what kind of exercise?
33. Do you own a pet?
34. Do you like house parties?
35. Have you ever partied on a terrace?
36. How clean is your terrace?
37. What do you wish you had on the terrace?
38. What do you wish to take with you when you go to the terrace?
39. What do you not want on a terrace?
40. What is your go-to place when you are happy/sad/angry?
41. What element of that place do you enjoy?
42. What do you enjoy doing alone?
43. What do you enjoy doing with the group?
44. Do you have a personal room at your home?
45. Do you have any kind of wild animals like monkeys around your area?
46. Where do you hang up clothes?
47. Do you know of any vitamin deficiency you might have?
2) Scheduling the interviews.
Reached out to the users I had to interview and scheduled a Zoom call with them.
3) Interviewing people via Zoom calls.
Interviewed the people on the date and time mutually decided. Asked the questions in a conversational manner trying not to make them conscious of their choices. Each interview went on for about 45 minutes to an hour.
4) Making notes of the interviews.
Made notes and recorded the calls with the consent of the users to hear the conversation again for any missing pieces.
5) Insights from the interviews were then written down
The different users, their background information, likes and dislikes are given below:
All this information collected formed the basis on which the problems were defined in the next stage i.e. the Define Stage
2) Define
This stage is the crux of all the research work done. In this stage the actual problems are identified and defined using the data collected in the empathize stage. From all the problems, the problems which seem to have a great impact on users as well as businesses are often prioritized.
After analyzing all the data collected — in this case study only by interviewing the users, all the problems that I could observe which the users were facing were listed down.
Here is a list of 24 problems that I could identify along with why I think these problems are important to the users:
1. Clean air not available. — Clean air is a necessity.
2. Lack of personal space to relax. — Users want some personal time in some open area.
3. Water storage tanks & fungus due to them. — Feels very untidy and congested.
4. Lack of proper sitting area on the terrace. — Users want to sit somewhere when they are on the terrace.
5. No/Less greenery around the house. — Users like greener surroundings rather than buildings.
6. Privacy required. — Lack of privacy.
7. No place to eat/drink/barbeque on the terrace. — Users wish to enjoy food with friends on the terrace.
8. Permission for terrace on the rented property. — Users want freedom.
9. Not suitable for exercise/yoga. — Have to pay for space to exercise or do yoga.
10. Monkey menace. — Feel unsafe from monkey attacks.
11. Clothes hanging on the terrace don’t look good. — Destroys the aesthetics of the terrace.
12. Dirty terrace. — Users likes cleanliness.
13. No or low railings present. — Personal safety.
14. Hard to access the terrace. — Users want to reach the terrace easily.
15. Lack of washroom. — To reduce the effort to go downstairs to use the washroom.
16. Water logging. — Damages the house.
17. Solar panels take up a lot of space. — Terrace feels cluttered.
18. Terrace not well designed for pets. — Users have pets.
19. AC units on the terrace give heat. — They take up space, and destroy the good atmosphere of the terrace.
20. Not shaded from direct sunlight. — Users do not want too much sunlight especially when the sun is bright.
21. Poor sunlight on the terrace. — Users want sunlight as some of them lack Vitamin D and others just like being under the sun.
22. No place to enjoy the rain. — Users love the rainy season.
23. Dish Antennas on the terrace look bad. — Destroy the aesthetic feels of the house.
24. No power sockets on the terrace. — Users need to use their devices when on the terrace.
This marks the end of define stage and with I now moved forward to finding possible solutions to these problems in the Ideate stage.
3) Ideate
Now comes the time when one actually gets to think about how to solve the problem. Here for stimulating my thought process to think more effectively and without consuming much time I followed the “Crazy 8” methodology. The methodology is simple — Think of 8 solutions to each problem in 8 minutes of time. There is no bar on what you think, so I was free to even provide solutions for now which were not even practically possible and might even sound absurd.
The problems with their solutions are:
The solutions ideated above have many solutions which might sound absurd and would not even be practical in real world scenarios, but I have kept this case study raw and haven’t omitted any initial thoughts I had.
The next step from here was to select Top 3 ideas from all the solutions with an appropriate reason that why I have selected them.
Here are those 3 ideas:
Top Idea 1 : Shed with a place to sit.
Reason: The most common thing I noticed was people like to go to the terrace to relax but there is no proper place to sit. People also would like to enjoy their food and weather there and they want to be protected from direct heat.
Top Idea 2: Curtains and blinds for privacy.
Reason: People feel a lack of privacy when they are on the terrace and they just do not want the neighbours or someone else from their own building to see them when they are there.
Top Idea 3: Power sockets to use electrical and electronic devices.
Reason: Users often feel the need to use their devices on the terrace either for entertainment or work or to clean the terrace but the lack of enough power points make the task difficult.
This marks the end of Ideate stage and now we move forward to actually solve one of these problems by designing a prototype in the Prototype stage.
4) Prototype
Everything done in the previous stages was to lay ground for what we have to create to solve the problem(s) of the user which ultimately will lead to a better user experience.
Before I move ahead to describe the solution through which I have tried to solve the one problem selected from the top 3 problems, I would like to list a few challenges that had to be taken into consideration before I could start developing the prototype.
The challenges were:
- To provide a practical solution.
- Cost Effective solution.
- Must be valid for large number of audience.
- The product must not hamper the usability of the terrace.
The solution I finally decided to work upon is Shed with a place to sit because the most common problem I noticed amongst most of the users was lack of personal, clean and secure place to sit while they were on the terrace. The users do not want to fully cover the terrace, but want to partially cover it.
Some of them want sunlight, some don’t want sunlight, some want the water tanks removed while others want artificial grass flooring with greenery around. Taking care of each and every problem is not possible in a single solution, but I have used an existing product and tried to cater to the needs of most of the users.
The product I have used to solve the needs of the users is generally called a “GAZEBO”.
It is a pretty common structure many of us already know about and we have seen them commonly in parks. This is where my inspiration came from. While passing by a nearby park I witnessed this:
The beauty of this structure is that it is very versatile and not only this solves the problem of finding a good place to sit on the terrace with a shed which only partially covers the terrace, but also it has the scope of customization to solve many of the other problems the users are facing as well.
First of all let’s talk about the structure and it’s seating. The structure shown above is quite huge for a terrace in most of the homes and the good thing about it is that it can be modified according to need. Smaller ones get be made on order and are already readily available in the markets.
The seating shown above are iron benches which I felt were inappropriate for a terrace as they are very hard to movie around because of their weight. So, here to fulfil the need of a chair and table I put forth the idea of replacing these benches with foldable chairs and table or study chairs which already have table attached to them.
The chair shown above can not only be used to study but to work on laptops and even to have food.
The other option is to get the Gazebo made with attached wooden benches on the borders like this:
Although the product above is a complete solution and is able to solve the issue of a proper place to sit on a terrace which does not cover the terrace partially, I observed this single product is able to solve various other problems users are having as well. Some of these features I would like to incorporate in the future scope of the project but I would like to discuss about them in detail.
These are:
a) Privacy
i) A user still needs privacy sitting inside the Gazebo.
ii) Here I made two adjustments to the Gazebo:
• See through curtains for little privacy.
• Blinds to be installed for more privacy.
The the Gazebo with curtains and blinds would looks something like this:
b) Building the Gazebo on a raised platform
Some users complaint about water logging on the terrace during rains. Although getting the sewage repaired is the primary option but it would be better to create this structure on a raised platform. Not only it aesthetically improves the design but also help to enjoy rains without being concerned about water logging.
c) Secondary Shed
People wanted to enjoy bonfires and barbeques. So here I have decided to add a secondary shed on the top of primary shed to let the smoke go out of the structure especially when blinds are down.
c) Power Sockets
To enable the users use this area as a workplace or a place of entertainment the pillars of the Gazebo will have power sockets.
d) Solar Panels
Some users have complaints that solar panels take up lot of space on the terrace. The Gazebo structure can have solar panels installed on top of it like this:
e) Greenery and Flooring
Many users prefer green surroundings, for them the terrace along with the gazebo can be made like this:
This marks the end of the prototype stage and now we move to the Testing stage where we get feedbacks from the users.
5) Testing
In this step the prototype prepared was shown to the users and feedbacks were accumulated.
The feedbacks I received were:
Feedback 1: “Everyone will not spend money to build up a Gazebo if he has a problem of let’s say only Water Clogging.”
Solution: Primarily I have solved the problem of seating with a shed and water clogging is a secondary problem which not many users face.
Feedback 2: “I think that if given a choice to build up a whole activity area like terrace, bedroom etc. We all will be able to solve every problem by building a new bathroom or parking area or balcony.”
Solution: Everything else apart from the simple Gazebo and a foldable seat were extras that could further enhance the usability and experience of the original product.
Feedback 3: “I just have a problem with the fact that it’s not very common to actually have a space on your terrace that can be converted into a gazebo, or have any space on your terrace to fit one maybe for that matter.”
Solution: The product I have designed is for the users I have interviewed and most of them had a terrace with ample space but no place to sit properly. So the solution is for an audience which does not face the problem of space on their terrace and a small Gazebo like the one given below can be arranged in minimum space.
A suggestion not in the scope of the project — For the people with very less space a structure similar to a Gazebo, a shed which is called “Awning” can be set up on any wall and it can function as a shed whenever needed and can be closed as well. The image of an Awning is given below:
Feedback 4: “My primary issue is that, most of the solutions seem to be for a user who already has a dedicated recreational area or some sort of functional space and is looking to upgrade it, but like I mentioned it’s not for someone like me who for instance doesn’t really have any pre existing recreational space and/or any space to spare on my terrace.”
Solution: The solution is for the users who have terraces with space.
Feedback 5: The only thing that concerns me is the fact that a gazebo would take up a fairly large amount of space and if I’m not wrong you said people don’t want their entire terrace covered. A large proportion of the population belongs to the middle class and they do not have massive terraces.
Solution: The solution is for the users who have terraces with space.
Also, kindly refer to solution for feedback 3.
Feedback 6: “If there are 2–3 houses in one building and just one terrace, I don’t know how it will be utilized.”
Solution: The structure can be utilized by all and it will solve the purpose it is intended to solve not just for one of them but all of them. In case of any situation like who will use it when either it can be one a first come first serve basis or turn wise.
Feedback 7: “Will cripple the users from doing any other activities on the terrace. They will now only be able to use the terrace for the Gazebo and nothing else.”
Solution: The Gazebo would use fairly less space on the terrace and would not hamper much of the terrace area. Kindly refer to the images below for the comparison of the size of Gazebo to a normal flat terrace.
Conclusion
The terrace is a very interesting place and every person has different importance for it. The variety of problems offered were challenging and this is my attempt to solve the most basic problem that a user faces according to the research conducted, which was “A user not having a good place to sit under a shed”.
With this I conclude this case study and this is the best possible solution I could provide for now, and this would be always open for further improvements since there is no such thing which can be perfect.
I would like to offer my sincere thanks to my mentor Mr. Anudeep Ayyagari, without whose guidance this project could not have been completed. I would also like to thank all the participants who helped me complete this project through their valuable inputs.
What I learnt?
- I am not the user. This thought strictly allows you to design for the users you have interviewed.
- Design Thinking Process.
- How to ideate a problem.
- How not to try to be perfect always.
Future Scope
- Curtains and Blinds on the Gazebo.
- Power Sockets on the pillars of Gazebo.
- Grass flooring.
- Portability of the structure.
Thankyou
Chetanya Batra
