The Mop That Solves the Problem of Wet Floors: A Product Design Case Study
Imagine mopping your floor without the dreaded waiting game. No more wet footprints, no more tiptoeing. This case study delves into the design of a revolutionary mop design that eliminates waiting for dry floors, offering a safer and more convenient cleaning experience. Join me on this little journey to explore the challenges, the solutions, and the meticulous design decisions that brought this product to life.
I picked up the utility area of an Indian household and tried to identify pain points or grab an opportunity and design a product to solve the issue.
Not much time? You can check out my 3-minute video of the product and design journey explanation here 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anirudh-p-manohar_its-done-my-final-product-design-case-activity-7139865166598328322-QHMR?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
But before that, a huge thanks to UX Anudeep for guiding me throughout the process of learning design and mentoring me! Alright now in!
Presenting you the “Quickdry Mop”! 🤩
Wait! But why am I showing the solution first? That’s because backstories of heroes come in the second part of the film! Just kidding😜. It is just to cut to the chase and not keep you waiting. Also, it creates some curiosity. 🔍
But how does someone use it? 🤔 Here’s an interesting journey of a user using the product in their life.
The features of the product are:
1) Super easy to hold handle.
2) Refillable water holder.
3) Dry surface and Wet surface mop.
So the mop works in a way where, when the user pushes the mop to wipe the floor, the wet surface mop splashes water and wipes the floor.
While pulling the mop towards the user, the dry surface mop touches the floor and wipes away the wet floor!
Now why is it important to solve this problem? 🧐
There is a “why” for each step in design right? So here is why the problems should be addressed with a product.
How did I design the product in the first place?
Let's find out the process I carried out and decisions I took to solve the problem and come up with the final design of the product.
Nope. That’s not how it happened. I DID IT WRONG! 😥
At first, I prepared a questionnaire which had very direct questions, not helping me to find out more problems faced by the users. 👀
So I had to reframe my questionnaire which contained more questions to know about the user’s journey in their daily lives. 📝
After this step, I was able to identify several surface level problems of the users from their everyday journeys.
But I didn’t want to make my user’s feel like they were under trial for some crime they committed! 😲 I realized I would get unbiased and uncontrolled answers from them only if they feel relaxed and similar to talking to a best friend!
So, this is how I reframed my questionnaire to get to know more information from the user:
- First, I asked questions about the user’s home and some icebreakers to ease in the users into the interview like “What are your hobbies?”, “How many people staying at your house?” etc.
- Next, I asked questions to understand the context of the user’s utility area for me to visualize how the user might use it. (What are the appliances present in your utility area? How many people can fit inside at the same time? How is the ventilation factor in the utility? What are the tools and appliances kept in the utility area you use often?)
- I started asking about the user’s journey of different activities like laundry, vessel washing, house cleaning, garbage clearing, and asked more deeper micro questions with respect to their journeys.
- I put users into realistic situations with respect to the utility area and their activities and understood their activities and their interactions with everything present in the utility area. (How would you prepare your utility area in case of a party night or a huge family dinner? If you’re working from home on a tight schedule, which task do you consider is time and energy consuming the most & why?)
- I made some hypothetical situations to bring out the pain points of the users. (If you had an assistant just to do work related to your utility area and the tools inside it, prioritize the top 3 tasks you would assign. Picture yourself cleaning your utility area, where would you struggle with? If your utility area could talk, what would it tell about you? 😂) Trust me, that last question worked well! 🫨(And also made my users laugh and break the ice 🫠)
Oh wait! But who were my users? Well, they were my group mates from my UX design course. It was really important to keep in mind that:
I am not the user. I am not designing for myself.
This removed all the biases I brought with me while designing the product.
Now that I’m done with my interviews, I compiled all my interview notes and picked up insights from them. Some of them are as listed below. 👇
Problem Scouting 🔍
So, what next? I collected all the insights and ended up with a smashing 42 different surface level problems! 🤯 I was shocked to be honest. I then eliminated problems which I thought could not be helped with a product, or a problem which has been addressed in the market several times (my product has to stand out from the others to make business right?). Next, I moved on to find out the root problems for each of the surface level problem listed above.
Now why find the root problem? Solving surface level problems do not guarantee the repetition of the problem. It is only when the root problem causing the surface level problem is solved, the chances of an issue occurring again is diminished. It is just like removing unwanted plants from the garden, along with their roots, so that they do not grow again.
So here we go to find out the root problems. In this step I followed the “5 whys” method to investigate the root problem.
But I got stuck again! 😥
It turned out that a surface problem can have multiple root problems, just like a tree having multiple branches, and I was finding it hard to select a single root problem to solve for. Check out the flow of 5-why chart I worked on to find the root problem of the problem statement I chose. 👇
After this confusion raised, I took the decision to select the root problem.
The problem statement to be solved must not only address the user’s issue or enhance the user’s experience, but it must also benefit the business and create sales.
So I picked root problem statements according to the below criteria:
Problem solved with a product and the solution could also benefit a business.
Negating problems specific to certain users.
Problems which could be addressed with just a few minor changes.
Modifying the layout or changing the location of the utility area or the appliances present in them.
Multiple Light Bulb Moments 💡
This was the most interesting step of the whole project: Providing ideas for solutions to solve the problems. For this step, I followed the crazy 8 method of ideation, where I had to list down 8 ideas in 8 minutes as product solutions for the problem statements. But I cannot provide random and unrealistic solutions, right? 😐
So, I made sure I followed certain guidelines while thinking about solutions. They were:
Economical
Efficient
Catering broad audience
Practical
Now I had so many ideas for products to choose from to design my final product for one particular solution. 🤔 Choosing the top 3 problems out of the lot was a tough decision to make in this project. The ideas were:
Whoo! 😮💨Now comes the most difficult decision I had to take:
Selecting one product idea. It was pretty hard to decide as I felt all of the ideas were viable and had a huge scope. Also, I did not know the basis in which I should pick the final product idea. 🤐
But 1 criterion was very crucial in terms of selecting the final product idea.
Why is it important to solve the problem?
This question paved the way to select my final product idea. I finally picked the quick dry mop idea (Idea no.2) 🥇 as I understood that it was one of the major problems faced not only by 1 person, but also affecting the users around the activity. And of course, the reasons mentioned in the beginning of the article. EUREKA! There I have it! 🎯
But there was a twist! How do I know that the product I designed will be suitable for the users and if it will solve their problems?
Bringing my Idea to Life 🔧
The only way to find out if my product solves the problems and enhances the users experience is to test it out with the users themselves. In that way, I could gather their feedback and incorporate their feedback into my design to develop a better functioning product.
REWIND REWIND REWIND 📼💿
First, I needed a prototype to test my product with my users. So, I started sketching my prototype and I made various designs options to figure out which design will be a practical solution.
This was a phase where I had to self-audit my design and prototype and check with myself if my design could be usable, viable and also fits under my design and solution guild lines as mentioned above. This is how I decided on my prototype for testing.
After many audits and iterations, I ended up with 1 lo-fidelity prototype to test it with my users for feedback, which is presented below 👇
Welcoming Criticism for Product Enhancement
I underestimated the power of testing, which gave me very good insights on improving my design with respect to functionality. Even though I felt confident about the design of the product, I still had doubts about what the users would think about them and how comfortable they would feel to use them. So I went back to the same users (peers from design course), explained my prototype and its use-case scenario and asked them for feedback on the product. 👇
Now it was my decision to pick the feedback to get back to my sketchbook and update my design, and which one to consider it as future developments.
I picked the feedback according to criteria such as time and feasibility to update the final product design.
So I added
👉 An extra roller mop to supplement the existing roller mop.
👉 Removed the sprinkler system to avoid the excess use of water.
👉 Changed the wet surface mop design to a self-releasing surface mop which acts on the pressure of the user to release water.
AND VIOLA! 🎊 That was the final design of the mop you saw in the beginning of the case study.
But what's the future for this product?
More features for testing may have been added if there had been more time and greater technical understanding or help, but there is always a next phase of development for any product. Some of the characteristics that may aid users in having a more pleasant and enjoyable experience are as follows:
⏩ A steam powered mop instead of using liquid for more easier drying and cleaning.
⏩ A mop head using the suction method of recognizing the floor surface and releasing the liquid for mopping.
⏩ A better material for mopping surface and more easier mechanics for the movement of the different surfaces.
That was a wholesome ride!
What did I learn from this project experience?
⭐ Unlearning to be a perfectionist and be student forever to learn all the time.
⭐ It became clear that not all issues could be fixed right away. Effective problem prioritization is crucial because it establishes the areas on which to concentrate resources and efforts.
⭐ Framing proper questionnaires and getting the best out of interviews was very insightful.
⭐ Thinking for the business and the user at the same time is very important, as it also impacts in the designing process.
⭐ Importance of knowing the user’s journey to deeply understand how to find the pain points and opportunities to design a product.
⭐ Testing can cause great impact on the design as it is a way to check the correctness of the designers thinking direction.
Now it’s your turn to become my users!
Please do visualize yourselves as a user for this product, and give me your feedback and comments, for me to improve in my design journey. Please do make suggestions💬or even appreciations👏 in any of the section of this case study down below in the comments. Always a seeker for learning. 😍
Also please do check out my LinkedIn post regarding this design process, and don’t forget to leave down your comments there as well!
LinkedIn Video & Post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anirudh-p-manohar_its-done-my-final-product-design-case-activity-7139865166598328322-QHMR?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Thanks a ton for reading my case study and design journey and sharing your valuable feedback!
Cheers ✌️
Check out my Portfolio: https://anirudh-manohar.notion.site/Hi-I-am-Anirudh-P-ec4f96e4c1a84b1b9f6128bd75deaaba?pvs=4
