This week’s challenge activity was all about putting the design thinking process (Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test) into practice in order to redesign the desk space of one of our colleagues. I had the opportunity to redesign Alex’s desk space.
I found it useful to visualise the Double Diamond model as I worked through this case study which has the phases: discover, define, develop, deliver (Drew, 2018). The Double Diamond involves both divergent and convergent phases of thinking - where you either create choices (diverge) or make choices (converge) (Brown, n.d.).
First I needed to interview Alex in order to really be able to empathise with how she was using her current desk space, how she had organised it, any frustrations she may have and how she felt her experience could be improved.
After reading a couple “Dos and Don’ts of Interviewing”, which included key insights for strategically composing user research questions, like the importance of keeping questions open ended, inquiring about actual behaviour and asking ‘why’ more often, I was ready to get writing. An open-ended question, when correctly followed up, can lead to lots of other answers, specific problems, sets of likes and the list goes on (McQuarrie, 2015). Some of the questions that made their way through to the interview included:
I really enjoyed getting to know Alex better and understanding her personal circumstances in more depth. Her paint points were very apparent in her answers. The more open-ended questions garnered longer responses from her, which included unexpected discoveries that proved helpful in the define and design stages of the design process.
Following on from my interview with Alex I began to evaluate her answers and her current desk space.
In the define stage, I arrived at the following problem statement:
Alex is a mum and a part-time Master’s student living in a small flat that doesn’t have enough room for both her and her partner to have their own office spaces. She is stuck working from her sofa and it is not a permanent solution as she only has room for her laptop.
Now it was finally time to get designing! After some sketching I generated the following desk space layout for Alex:
Since Alex had made it very clear in the interview that there was nowhere in her flat that she could fit a desk without having to throw other furniture away, I realised the only solution was to use vertical space. Installing a floating shelf along the sofa’s arm rest would create a second desk space for Alex so that she wouldn’t only rely on her portable laptop stand. Further shelves could be added above to offer optimum space utilisation and minimal inconvenience. In this way, Alex wouldn’t need to bring her things (pens, notebooks, books, etc) to the sofa everyday when she starts working - she could have them already neatly organised on her shelves.
I sent my design to Alex for real user feedback. I also shared my design with my other colleagues and my course tutors for review and group discussion.
Alex came back and said that she found the idea was brilliant and had never thought of it at all. She really loved it and was going to start looking into it as soon as possible.
The only obstacle she could foresee to the implementation of my design was that the walls of her flat are paper thin. She would need to double check first in order to ensure that the wall would be able to hold the weight of the shelves.
This was an exciting design challenge. Alex’s case was somewhat of an edge case, as she currently doesn’t have her own proper office space, which made it all the more interesting to design a solution for her.
Next steps could include looking to iterate on my initial design and exploring stand-alone solutions for Alex that wouldn’t need to be attached to the wall in order to overcome the potential obstacle that she identified in her feedback.
Brown, T. (n.d.) Design Thinking Defined, Ideo Design Thinking. Available at: https://designthinking.ideo.com/ (Accessed: January 28, 2022).
Drew, C. (2018) “The Double Diamond: 15 years on,” Design Council. Available at: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/double-diamond-15-years (Accessed: January 28, 2022).
McQuarrie, E. F. (2015) The market research toolbox: a concise guide for beginners. London, England: SAGE Publications.
