4.5 User Journey & Prototyping Method

User Journey

After designing the preliminary system components, the team started to think about the complete journey that users will go through with our system.

Scenario 1

We started with the situation where the child s asking for mom’s help in real time. For this scenario, the system is aiming for providing help to the uneasy remote cooking process and enhance bonding between the child and the parent.

The scenario goes from calling mom for help, to real-time interactive instruction, to sharing the outcome and adding the family recipe into the system.

Scenario 2

The second scenario builds off from the first one with another perspective on family bonding: enhance connection within the larger remote family context beyond the child-parent bond.

we considered the inclusiveness of our design, trying to allow all family members be able to participate in the cooking experience no matter where they are located. Therefore, we visioned the situation where remote family relatives receive a notification when a new recipe is added. They might use some devices to be able to interact with the dish beyond the 2D image level to gain a more connected feeling (as indicated in our speed-dating, 1. people feel connected when they receive similar amount/quality of sensory information with less constraint; 2. people don’t always feel comfortable when they can’t see the boundary between what is digital and what is too real).

Scenario 3

The third scenario is looking at family bonding in a even longer term:the system is capable of storing and retrieving family recipes over generations, thus carrying on family legacies and enhance bonding between older and younger generations.

The scenario goes from the child becoming the parent and wanting to share his mom’s recipe with his child. The new parent is able to attach notes onto the family recipe, and share it to his child, thus enriching the recipe with generational traces. When the child receives the recipe and cooks along with it, the child is able to see all notes that are left by other family members over time.

Skype Prototyping

The team also tested viable rapid prototyping method for the project. We connected HoloLens Skype with Windows desktop Skype, and tried out its spatial drawing and image manipulation functions.

We found this path a very promising one in terms of conducting valid user testings. We plan to create needed design assets for the system interface, and manually drag them into the Skype window to simulate the system automation. Although the carrier of our system might not be wearable, we find this a quick and dirty way to realize our design intent/concept.