“Re-moving” the Confusion of Moving

A product design case study

The essence of the moving process is not in the act of moving physical belongings; but rather, it is the transference of a comforting, familiar, and intimate nature from one’s home to another.

Introduction

After moving two times within the last two years — once from my home in San Jose to college at Berkeley and the next from the dorms to my current apartment— I can attest to how taxing the process can be.

Moving was not only physically exhausting, but mentally draining as well.

While moving, I tried searching for a solution to make the task-at-hand easier. However, I noticed that most of the current products only catered towards moving’s physical complications. There were barely any services or products that were centered around moving’s mental turbulence. Even though it was relatively simple to move my things from one place to another, I was left frustrated and empty-handed when it came to my emotional needs.

So, for this personal project, I wanted to design a simpler and more effective product that made the moving process not only easier on the body, but also helped to rebuild and maintain a stable, homelike state of mind throughout the whole moving process.

Setting the Scene

First things first, it was important to define “moving”.

What exactly is the moving process?

Using my first-hand experience, I decided to split the process into five different stages based on location and the corresponding behavior respective to each setting.

Next, it was time to conduct user research.

Moderated User Research

I wanted my interviews to be succinct but also informative, so I came up with an interview guide that consisted of a few questions for each stage. I tried my best to use the least amount of questions necessary in order to gather the information I needed.

Equipped with these questions, I went out and started to interview people.

Being a college student, I was lucky enough to have made plenty of friends and acquaintances who had all recently moved. This made it easy for me to find interviewees within my target audience. And over one week’s time, I conducted a total of twelve interviews with students from varying grade levels and demographics.

Next, I looked through my findings and picked out any notable quotes and separated them based on which stage they were associated with.

Then, I categorized them as either a feeling, a thought, or an existing issue and came up with the chart shown below detailing the interview results.

After looking through the data, a few prominent patterns began to arise.

One of the more noteworthy conclusions I deduced was that these students did not have a hard time transporting items at all and they were more likely to be concerned about psychological complications. Relating back to what I mentioned earlier, we can see how the the current market’s focus on moving’s physical ailments has come at the cost of the mental well-being of the movers themselves.

Thus, I went through again and color-coded the quotes that shared similar sentiments. After doing so, it became apparent that there were three prominent “saturation points” that emerged from the data. The feelings, thoughts, and problems of these past movers illustrated to me that the moving process was a confusing, disorganized, and uncomfortable experience.

And also,

That the current products on the market had not adequately fulfilled the people’s needs and there was ample demand for a better solution.

User Personas

Using these findings, I came up with two user personas.

• The first persona was that of a freshman who had just moved from their home country/city to college and
• the second persona was that of an upperclassman who had moved from the dorms to their apartments.

I was lucky enough to have been in both positions which allowed me to better empathize with their situations and pick out issues accordingly.

My own experiences, the market research, and the personas all supported one central notion:

The solution was not about finding a faster and more efficient way of transporting items from one location to another, but should be heavily focused on solving the lack of mental organization during the process as a whole.

This overarching conclusion led me to discover the goal of my design process:

To create a more visually coordinated and systematized method of moving that fostered an informed, organized, and comfortable moving experience.

Ideation

With this objective in mind, I came up with four user needs that my product needed to fulfill. These needs correlated with the three “sub-goals” that were stated within the objective and were used to determine the validity of my ideas. I used a color-code once again to illustrate the connections between the overarching patterns I discovered in my research and these user needs.

It was time to start brainstorming.

I started the ideation process by jotting down some quick ideas and sketches onto a few sticky notes.

Some of the ideas included:

• An app that helped you sort what items you needed to bring and which item you probably didn’t need,
• A space optimization app that helped to relegate items within different boxes and then generate floor-plans for each box in order to maximize space usage and efficiency when packing,
• And a personal “moving handbook” that gave you Geo-specific advice on the location you are moving from and the location you are moving to which helped with assimilation and other aspects of moving.

Sadly, none of these ideas were chosen.

After looking back through all of the solutions, I picked the three ideas that seemed the most viable to me in terms of the user needs they met and the potential they had to be impactful.

In the end, I ended up picking the “Scanning App + Signaling Device” because it met every single user need and the “needs” it did not meet were actions the user could take before the moving process. The other two solutions were good, but they both did not completely meet the criteria.

Before I went into prototyping, I decided to do some more secondary research. It was at that point I discovered there was already an app on the market, Sortly, that fulfilled the function of the “Scanning App.”

This allowed me to save time and work on a product that complemented the existing application instead of building an identical one on my own.

And so… the idea was born.

One of the largest factors that fosters a smooth transition from one place to another is the ease of mind offered when one always knows where their belongings are and what exactly is being moved throughout the entire process. By making sure the mover always feels comfortable and organized during the journey, this level-headed mindset allows them to better hold their ground in the midst of a drastically changing environment.

After all, of what use is a fast delivery process if the mover’s world is turned upside down and their belongings scattered across a foreign landscape when everything is dropped off?

I believe the solution I chose was able to give consumers both a fast and organized delivery process that enabled them to have a fluid moving experience:

Not only did the colored bands and their complementary application make the mover more informed, more organized, and more comfortable, I believe it held the key to transforming moving itself:

emotional and psychological guidance channeled through physical means of application.

Prototyping

After I determined the product, it was time to start prototyping.

I sketched out a rough outline of what the product would look like and highlighted its features.

I then described how these devices were meant to be used in conjunction with Sortly.

By allowing the user to have organizational tools both in the real and digital worlds, it gives them a sense of peace and security throughout the whole process.

User Testing

Lastly, I was able to conduct one round of user testing with a few previous interviewees and I responded to some of the feedback.

If I were to work on this product in the future, I would create another iteration of the prototype with the feedback I received. The new product would include designing a website/ordering system where the mover could input custom dimensions of their moving containers. I would also develop more sizes and shapes of the colored bands in order to fit more containers. This would widen the scope of different uses of the product.

Lastly, I would go out and conduct another round of user-testing and iterate until the product was polished enough for production.

Conclusion

Moving is not merely a physical endeavor.

It is a full-bodied experience filled with mental road-blocks and adversity. If we do not tackle these issues, a large part of the moving journey will be left forgotten and untouched. We need to begin to think about the process as a whole instead of focusing on a solution-saturated “issue.” Moving is so much more than just putting things in boxes and unloading them at another place; it is an entire journey filled with hardships at each step of the way.

Although my product is a long ways from cutting edge technology, I hope it illustrates the direction that products are heading in and also gives a brief overview of my design process. By viewing the consumer journey from a birds-eye view, people are able to innovate and create with more foresight and breadth to produce revolutionary products.

This project really blew my mind with what I was able to discover about moving. When I initially started it, I thought I would end up designing a simple product that solved a simple inconvenience during the moving process, but it ended up being so much more. I hope you enjoyed this read and maybe even learned a little something about moving! And with that, I would like to end on this note:

The next time you help someone move, remember to offer them not only a helping hand, but also an understanding and empathetic heart as they maneuver through this decidedly complex and chaotic journey.

If you are interested in hiring me or have more questions, please email me at josh_mao@berkeley.edu