Cable Clutter Be Gone🔌: A smart storage solution for Home Office workspaces created using Design Thinking Process
COVID changed the landscape of how we work. We were bound to our homes and they were now also seen as a place of work. It was a rollercoaster ride to be frank but we can’t help but accept that we have this feeling that a nice home office might just be the thing that makes working at home a lot easier.
Under the guidance of my mentor, UX Anudeep and by following the Design Thinking Process, I found an issue in the current work set up/experience of my users and solved it by creating a product called RUBOX that can store, organize and route wires and cables thereby eliminating clutter from the work desk.
📖 Table of contents
🎯 How did I chose the problem area?
This is a group project where each and every team member should pick an area of the house from a list (Home Office, Bedroom, Dinning Area, Bathroom, Storage Unit, Parking, etc.) and work individually with the rest of the team members acting as the end users.
The method of picking an area is through having a healthy fight with the team members by giving reasons as to why one deserves to work in the area of their interest. No two members should select the same area.
We were a team of six and we started to call out the areas we want to work in. Even if the team is okay with our choice they are not supposed to accept it openly. Instead, they can claim their rights to our area and continue the fight till they have no choice but to accept our reasonings.
🤼 We fought for about 2 hours through our group channel in discord and all of us had strong reasoning for choosing the area we wanted to work on.
I chose to work on Home Office area as I currently do not have a dedicated space in my house for setting up a Home Office and I wanted to know how having an isolated space created as per our liking, in our homes, contributes towards better performance at work.
👨🔬 What is Design Thinking Process?
Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that can be followed to solve complex problems. The process has 5 stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
Each stage in this process helps us to understand the problem in a holistic way and ensures that the solution is user-centric. Since this is a non-linear way of solving problems, we can revisit the previous stages at any time during the process and arrive at a solution.
I will explain what each of the stages are and also explain what I did in those stages to move closer to arriving at my solution.
😀 Empathizing with the users
In this stage I need to understand the user better in order for me to understand their needs and pain points. Basically I need to see things in their perspective.
🤔 What will I do in this stage?
- I need to come up with questions that are conversational in nature. These questions should revolve around how the users work at home and what potential issues could they be having.
- Have a One on One call with them and conduct the user interviews. The users should feel comfortable and should not feel they are being interrogated.
- Take notes throughout the interview session even if it is recorded.
Here are the questions I planned to ask during the interview session:
Each interview lasted for about 45 minutes and I managed not to ask any surface level or Yes/No type questions and I was able to derive meaningful insights.
🔭 Insights I got from the users:
Now that I have my insights it’s time to identify the problems.
📝 Defining the problems
In this stage I would need to frame my problem statements based on the insights I derived from the previous stage. This would help in ideating potential solutions in the next stage.
🤔 What will I do in this stage?
- Go through the Insights, recordings and interview notes and identify friction points or instances where user has had a problem. This can also be something that they didn’t know would be a problem in the first place.
- Create as many problem statements as possible. They should be contextual, not long, should not be solution oriented and relevant to Home Office area alone.
🔭 Here are the problem statements I framed based on my previous stage:
Before proceeding to the next stage I need to find out why the above problems are important for the users and why it worth solving. This will prove to be instrumental when I have to narrow down the list of problems that are actually worth solving.
Here are the reasonings for each of those problem statements:
1️⃣ Drishika
Since she is claustrophobic she is unable to make use of a good office set up. This in turn causes her to have health issues which affect her spine and head and ultimately this impacts her ability to work.
2️⃣ Nitish
1. Since wires and cables are all over the desk and drop down to the floor there is a real possibility of having an electric shock, not having enough space to keep things on the desk or simply put Nitish can trip and fall down.
2. Nitish currently makes use of a 13” laptop and it is not ideal for work. If he goes in for a monitor, it can be big and will occupy a lot of space.
3. The height of the table is not enough for Nitish to have his laptop in level with his eyes. So he needs to bend quite a lot and this will impact his health a lot.
4. Nitish’s room is being accessed by everyone in his house and his desk is being used as a common storage unit so he is distracted. This affects his performance at office.
Go to ideation stage directly👇
3️⃣ Areeb
1. He is not able to find a suitable lighting solution for his desk so he is using a very high power LED bulb which will damage his eyes permanently. So he needs a softer low power light position at an ideal height.
2. His desk is located near the balcony entrance and it is exposed to dust and particles constantly and it covers the gadgets and books as well. He has to spend time cleaning it everyday and this is not an ideal set up.
3. His background is an open shelf filled with things and it is not good to have it as background and due to limited space he cannot move his desk. He does not trust software solutions either as they are buggy. So to save this embarrassment he needs a good looking background.
4. His desk is small and not organized. There is no space to keep his food and water bottle. If he keeps it on stuff he risks spilling food and spoiling the things on the desk.
4️⃣ Aravind
1. He needs visual stimulus to get creative and he wanted to try having an aquarium but it is costly. He tried to have a visually stunning picture but he has to look at the same picture again and again. This in turn affected his ability to perform his work.
2. Since he has no dedicated work room and he lives with his entire family under one roof, he is constantly being distracted by the intrusion of his family members into his room and doing their work. Kids do not allow him to work. He is not able to concentrate properly.
3. Since all of his gadgets and wires are all over the bed and he is unable to find a proper storage space for it, he is left with no choice but to keep it on his bed and sleep there itself. He believes that by keeping these things in a communal storage space he risks the gadgets getting damaged. That is why it is important for him to have a safe accessible storage space.
4. His bedroom is a hot place exposed to direct sun. His fan is not making up for it and he does not use an AC. If he wishes to work in a different room there is not telling whether he has proper ventilation or not. So he needs a portable reliable ventilation setup.
🧪 Ideating on potential solutions
I will be generating ideas to the problems identified. In this stage, I will use Crazy8’s technique to come up with ideas in a short span of time.
🤔 What will I do in this stage?
- Take the problem statements and reasoning and keep it in front of me.
- Set timer to 8 minutes on a stopwatch.
- Come up with as many ideas as possible, that will solve the listed problem.
💡 Here are the ideas I came up with:
Out of all these ideas now I have to shortlist only three from them. It doesn’t matter if the solution already exists in market as long as it solves the problem.
Reason behind choosing them:
Idea 1: All of the interviewees do not have enough space in their house to have a standalone floor mount table. By having this portable height adjustable table they can fold up the table and free up space and adjust the height according to their preference.
Idea 2: Almost anyone working at home faces this issue. Wires all over the place can make the table or floor messy and it could potentially hurt someone if they trip over. Existing products are just boxes and this only shifts the problem inside the box and doesn’t really solve the problem.
Idea 3: This product can fit in almost all sizes of floor mount table making it an ideal choice for fitting it in any suitable location of the table and having your food. Many don’t have a big table having enough space for having your plates and your laptops.
I chose the Cable organizer as the final idea I want to work as currently there is no proper product available in the market to address specific needs of a user who uses multiple devices in a normal working day.
🛠 Prototyping the final chosen idea
This is where I will finally visualize the idea I have chosen.
🤔 What will I do in this stage?
- Make a 2D sketch or a 3D model of the chosen idea/solution. It need not be perfect as the point of this stage is to prepare my prototype and quickly getting it tested with the users.
- If my solution already exists in the market, I will evaluate it and see if I can do some modifications to it to and make it better.
🏗 Here is how I designed the prototype:
The prototype is a proper Cable Organizer called RUBOX.
Its may look like a suitcase, but its a cable organizer box made of durable recycled plastics. It’s dimensions are 12"L x 8"H x 4"D, making it a compact cable organizer.
Front view — You can see the front side of Rubox showing you the lid handles, output port slots and the extension box holder/tray.
Side view — You can see the output port slots on either side of Rubox.
Top view — You can see the slots from where you will bring in the cables from the extension box. The two grey boxes below the slots are actually the tracks of the extension box holder (shown without the holder).
What does it have inside?
- Extension box holder rack/tray.
- Regular size laptop charging adapter holder
- Lid magnets of the organizer cover/lid
- Port slots/output slots for bringing the cables out of the organizer
- Zipper Pouch for storing items
- Cable router for routing the cables in the required direction
- Cable spool for storing thick cables/wires
- Large size laptop charging adapter holder
- Lid handle allowing the user to open the lid to access the organizer
- Magnet attachment to lock onto the lid magnet
- Organizer box pad/foot to hold it upright on a flat surface
- Lid hinge mechanism
Inspiration for some of the elements:
- Extension box holder/tray — I took inspiration from what looks like a camera holder/Selfie stick’s phone holder part. It needs to expanded in order to fit the gadget. Similarly you need to open it/expand it in order to fit the Extension box.
- Cable router/track — I took inspiration from this under table wire holder. Just like in the image, the user can route the wire/cable in the desired direction and take it out of the output port/slots.
- Cable spool — I took inspiration from a small wire/headphone pouch/carry box wherein the wire/cable has to be spun and stored in a coil form.
Now, I’m off to test it with the users and see if my product will make their Home Office experience better.
📈 Testing the solution with the users
This is where my product will be tested with the users to see if it really solves their problems.
🤔 What will I do in this stage?
- Unlike the Initial interview session, here I will have to showcase the product to the entire group(my users) in a single call.
- While presenting I will make sure to explain each and every aspect of my product in simple terms, avoiding any technical terms/jargons.
- I will note down all the feedback.
👂 Here is the feedback I received from my users:
The rest of the team members where not available for a review.
🚀 Future scope of the product and learnings I had
Based on the feedback I received from the users I will make the following changes to my product(RUBOX) in the future,
- Including a Fan for heat management. The power for which can either be derived from a AA/AAA Battery or from a device like laptop or power banks through a USB cable.
- Increase the size of the slots to accommodate bigger cable heads like VGA, HDMI etc.
- Include a wall mount provision at the back of the product so that this can be kept on a flat surface or can be fitted to a wall.
👨🔬 Learnings I had by doing this project:
1. Not to assume the solutions during the user interviews itself.
2. How to ask the right questions to get useful insights
3. Prioritizing solutions that can impact a majority of users
🎉It’s a wrap!
Hope you found my solution useful and I wish one day I am able to actually manufacture this product and test it in the real world.
You can reach out to me through:
📱 LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalvenkat2497
📧 Mail ID — vishalvenkat.ux@gmail.com
