Design Thinking 💡

How I kickstarted my UX Design Journey.

A case study where I will show you how I took the first step in learning UX design through this simple case study which helped me learn the design process quickly.

Every Great Design begins with an even better story.

-Lorinda Mamo

Context

As a part of the design learning process, I was asked to interview 4–5 users to find out about any challenges that they may face while using their Kitchens and present my proposed solutions in front of them. The essence of the project was to understand how important it is to empathize with the users.

The Process

1. Empathize

To empathize with the users, I planned 1:1 Interviews with 4 users( users were peers from the Bootcamp in this case). To ensure I had an open mind, I planned my interview questions beforehand and made sure to include open-ended questions and make it feel like a conversation rather than an interview to connect better with the users and understand their perspectives.

Preparing for the Interview:

1. Where is the Kitchen Located in your house?
2. How much time do you generally spend on your Kitchen every day?
3. How do you generally start the preparation for your meal, Can you walk me through the process?
4. Do you feel comfortable locating items in Your Kitchen?
5. How do you feel about the space in your kitchen?
6. Do you also spend time in your kitchen when you’re not cooking? ( Why or Why not)
7. How much time do you generally spend cleaning your Kitchen?
8. How would you define the ideal cooking experience for you?

The questions were further improvised according to users' responses.

Insights From the Users

User 1: Uses Kitchen only in her free time she would like to have better ambiance like a natural touch to her kitchen. A good amount of natural light, some plants, and the option to play music while cooking.

User 2: the user doesn’t do much cooking, she doesn’t have many preferences but would like to find everything easily and convenient for her use like having a small separate cabinet near the burner to hold the ingredients used to make Beverages.

User 3: Spends time in the kitchen every day either cooking or helping with the preparation, Likes to hang out in the Kitchen with her wife.

Would like to have everything designed as per his convenience but great lighting and a little bit of improvement in the aesthetics would do the trick.

User 4: He is an occasional cook. Would like to have some free space in the kitchen to move around and get some fancy cabinets and lightings.

An example of how I presented my key learnings from the interviews with my users. As a beginner in the field, this really helped in understanding the users better and gave me a lot of Insights which made the further process easier.

02. Define

At this stage, I have to define the problem statement after understanding my findings from the Interviews.

Defining the problem from the User’s perspective:

User 1: Himani uses the kitchen to cook only occasionally and hence would like to enjoy doing that but doesn’t have any source of natural light or any kind of natural touch like plants. Also, she likes to shop for herself but doesn’t have any personal storage. Tends to forget where which item is kept.

User 2: Akshara doesn’t like spending much time in the kitchen but doesn’t have a place to sit and eat her meal if she wants to save her time. Also, she only uses the kitchen to make Tea/ Coffee so would like to have the required items within easy reach.

User 3: Balaji has designed a kitchen as per his needs but the only thing that bothers him is not having a separate utility area which makes the area near the sink a bit messy and unmanageable sometimes. Also, he likes to hang out in the Kitchen so would like to have the option of playing the music in the background.

User 4: Srinivas doesn’t use the kitchen very often so he doesn’t have a problem in the kitchen as such but he would like to learn to cook and spend more time with his mom in the Kitchen.

3 out of the 4 users don’t use the kitchen very often so they don’t have a problem in the Kitchen as such but all of them tend to forget the location of the items, Doesn’t have any personal storage in the Kitchen, and all of them love to play music while cooking.

Understanding why the defined problem is important to the Users:

All the users have a full-time job and don’t get much time to spend in the kitchen. All of them are living with their families right now and thus get a prepared meal every day. Most of them only use Kitchen to either get their meals quickly or otherwise to make beverages for themselves. Since most of them don’t use the kitchen so often they don’t have personal storage space but prefer few things to keep for their own use and also most of them tend to forget the location of items in their kitchen.

03. Ideate

This is the stage when we want to start thinking of solutions to the user problem(s). 🔍

At this stage, I tried to understand the common pain points of the users, the emotion behind their frustrations, and keeping that in mind I ideated some solutions for the users.

1. Get a smart device or speakers installed to play recipes or music in the kitchen.
2. To make them locate things easily, I would suggest making labels for the kitchen cabinets.
3. Temporary furniture like foldable tables and chairs could be used for when they want to hang out in the kitchen and use their devices ( laptop, phone, etc..)
4. Replacing the standard sink with a Double sink to avoid the problems of the utility area and make the kitchen look cleaner.
5. Getting a good lighting concept for the Kitchen.

04. Prototype

Based on my Inferences from above, I tried to solve a common problem that most of the users were either facing or would just want to eliminate.

Since 3 out of the 4 users don’t use the kitchen very often, Problems were not really in the Kitchen or if there were any, then users did not bother about it much because they don’t use the kitchen so much and hence rather than a solution in the existing scenario, I’ve proposed an addition to their Kitchen Which would provide a better experience to users because they wanted to enjoy cooking as an activity to do on weekends and not to feel like they’re working.

05. Testing

The prototype was then presented in front of the users and I noted their responses and feedbacks.

Most of the users were satisfied with the solution but wanted to know how it could be more functional which is the next step of my design process “Iterate” so stay tuned. Many of the users were eager to integrate the solution as they were excited about it.

Learnings

I was very clueless about the entire process as this was my first assignment in the field of UX Design but I ended up learning a lot. It really helped me in understanding how to empathize with the users, be in their shoes and how important it is because only then you’ll be able to actually solve their problems. I am really excited about learning more after this project and I hope this article helps anybody who is starting his/her career in the field of UX.