writings

IOT-enabled pharmaceutical packaging.

Prototyping is a fundamental part of the design process.

Mocking up representations, even crude concepts to refined designs, affords the opportunity to challenge assumptions and make adjustments before all of the gears of the business are in motion. The experienced entrepreneur seizes opportunity to use mockups and their evaluation as critical to challenging the viability of the product and indeed even the business plan. Engineering will use mockups to explore the specifications for what the real system will become. Furthermore, having a tangible representation of what is often still an idea the team’s collective mind, keeps everyone on track and the project focused.

As a designer, I’ve experimented with prototyping for projects across a diverse range of industries to effectively demonstrate and validate concepts. An effective customer pitch, for novel products or technologies such as smart packaging for example, buttressed by prototypes, can draw your audience into an experience, the specific experience you want them to have that will result their what you’d ideally like them to do afterwards. In my experience, the most effective way to demonstrate sensor-enabled smart labels as the cold chain logistics game-changers they are, is theatre; telling a story using prototypes paints the vivid picture of the future for an audience. RFID readers that monitor conditions like temperature and humidity in real time across the logistics chain? I’ll show you, and in a context that’s relevant to your business or industry.

Printed electronic labels and packaging prototypes were successfully demonstrated at IDTechEx Show last year in Santa Clara. In addition to witnessing our demo, users could easily scan the bottles themselves and see the real-time updates on a nearby dashboard.

Smart packaging is an exciting area of interest, one that has the potential to revolutionize cold chain logistics, as well as retail in general. The working prototype was an important ingredient in communicating our vision for smart packaging to a broader audience.

Access IOT packaging video.

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Designing for Emotional Effect

The rewards are substantial for those companies that connect with customers’ emotions in a positive way.

Everything around us has been designed in some way and all design ultimately produces an emotion. We experience an emotional reaction to our environment, moment-by-moment: a like or a dislike, elation, joy, frustration. Concepts validated by target users can help identify the powerful motivators that lead to making meaningful connections.

RESPONSE > EMOTION

Experience Designers strive to design usable, functional experiences but to also generate a certain emotional effect for the user and try to maintain it throughout the use experience. Design for Emotion concentrates on how a product or interaction affects users. It is a moment-by-moment journey with occasional pauses. A continuum operating on ones visceral, behavioral and reflective functions

Emotions change the way the brain operates; negative experiences can prod us to focus on what’s wrong; they narrow the thought process, potentially making someone feel anxious and tense. Feelings of frustration and restriction can grow into extreme emotions, like anger, an emotion not typically associated with a successful product or company. Positive experiences elicit pleasure and the sense of security or validation that are characteristic of successful products, their repeat use and brand loyalty.

Customer experience strategies need to include designing for the entire human experience. User research and product testing are used to effectively set up and gauge the emotional effects of a product or service on users. Touch-point mapping, for example, helps to identify obstacles where users may become frustrated and drop out of an encounter, or become pleased and successfully complete the encounter and return for more. A project I co-led to integrate AOL’s single sign-on feature into Amazon’s purchase flow, circa 2000, comes to mind. Together with Amazon’s design and engineering teams, we probed each discrete decision point within the authentication flow to reveal weaknesses.

Tactics likes these help designers and product managers better understand customer motivations, anticipate user behavior and better design products. Genuinely seeing what’s right in front of you can be vital to delivering an ideal customer experience and competitive advantage.

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Working with Proxy-Prototypes

Participant handling a proxy-prototype (everyday objects of various size, form and purpose) standing in for the real product.

Rapid inquiry using proxy prototypes helps quickly reveal beliefs, habits, biases and expectations, that shape product requirements and goals.

What are proxy-prototypes?

• Quick, low investment method to evaluate the value of concept;

• Test hypotheses around core customer experience and business value;

• An early best guess at a viable product;

• Don’t necessarily need to be functional in order to be effective;

• Designed quickly (2-days to 2-weeks) and deployed with real users;

• Employ minimal novel technology, but strong user stories;

• Findings are collected from in-depth ethnographic pre/post-interview;

• Disposable; make way for more.

Purpose

1. Observe the world; understand human and business problems.

2. Create hypotheses about customer value and how to create it.

3. Generate idea spaces to test hypotheses;

4. Deploy with potential users for extended periods (1-2 weeks).

5. Debrief study participants, recording observations, learnings.

6. Evaluate hypothesis based on participant feedback.

7. Revise and repeat.

Clay applicator proxy-prototype for observing the mechanics of grasp and gesture.

PROXY-PROTOTYPE

As simple as possible, usually with a single main function and two or three easily accessible functions.

Open-ended. Users should be encouraged to reinterpret them and use them in unexpected ways.

Not about usability and not changed based on user feedback. A deliberate lack of certain functionality might be chosen in an effort to provoke the users.

Collect data about users and help them (and us) generate ideas for new technology.

Introduced early in the design process to challenge pre-existing ideas and influence future design.

PROTOTYPE

Many layers of functionality to address a range of needs, not all of which may even be implemented.

Focused as to purpose and expected manner of use. Focused as to purpose and expected manner of use.

Usability is a primary concern and the design is expected to change during the use period to accommodate input from users.

Can collect data as well, but this is not a primary goal. Can collect data as well, but this is not a primary goal.

Appear later in the development process and are improved iteratively, rather than thrown away. [Based on Hutchinson et al, 2003]