Dancing Tangram
Type: Course Project
Timeline: 3 months (Sep. 2013 — Nov. 2014)
Methods: Desk Research, User Research, Ideation
Team: Jiaxin Li, Zhibin Wu, Zhanghong Wu, Zuyi Lin, Wenbin Ling, Pei Pan
01 Overview
Through research, we found that blind people like music and dancing, but there is no dancing equipment for them, so we want to design a dance mat, which prompts the next move by sound, for them to dance at home.
02 Background
At present, sports equipment for blind people is a blank market, which not only leads to fewer opportunities for blind people to enjoy sports but also increases the risks of using normal sports equipment. We can design a special product for blind people so that they can enjoy the fun and be safe at the same time.
03 Research
To understand blind people’s needs and characteristics, we conducted desk research, user interview and field research. We mainly focused on Guangzhou School for The Blind, where we could easily found students from first grade to twelfth grade, teachers and parents. Besides, we also interview blind massagist, the staff of sports mall and gym and so on.
04 Ideation
Based on the design opportunities we have discovered, we met together to brainstorm ideas.
Out of abundant ideas we have chosen 10 to further develop. Then we evaluated and rated these ideas according to some matrixes, such as safe, interactive, sense and so on. The top 3 will be continued.
05 Three Ideas
06 Conceptual Testing
We used cardboard to build a 1:1 model, and everyone has tried it. But the following evaluation and improvement will be based on a 173cm user.
Feedback
1. Distance between buttons is too far
When one foot is in the middle and the other is pressing the button, the gravity bearing foot needs to squat, which is not a comfortable gesture. Moreover, when both feet are pressing the buttons, the distance is too big that makes it difficult to pull the feet back when the music is fast.We should collect more people’s data to design a comfortable distance.
2. Buttons are too small
3. Buttons are too steep
07 Final Design
What to Improve?
Research
· The research was superficial, and we didn’t understand their exact needs. We can narrow down the user group, and applied user diaries to long-term research, and we can try to cover our eyes to imitate their experience.
· We were not familiar with the categories and mechanisms of sports machines.
Brainstorming
At brainstorming, we paid too much attention to the feasibility, which might kill many crazy ideas. At the same time, due to the lack of preliminary research, we did not produce enough valuable ideas
Conceptual Testing
In this stage we were rather hasty, we should have returned to our users for effective feedback to improve the product.
