Design is a large part of Olin’s curriculum. The cornerstone of this component is the User Oriented Collaborative Design (UOCD) class which is taken by all students in their sophomore year. The class is run as a semester long team project with three students assigned to each group. The goal of the project is to pick a well defined user group (in my case, welders in Massachusetts) and then to learn as much as possible about that group through ethnographic research. After the groups effectively empathizes with their users, they produce prototypes of products which addresses the desires and needs of their users. These prototypes (or concept models) are then shown to actual users and their feedback is incorporated into a second iteration of the prototypes. This process is repeated until a prototype is produced which is well received by the users.

Our Project

My group started the process by visiting several welding shops. On our first round of visits we brought cameras, notebooks and release forms. Before observing any of the shop floors, we contacted management at each shop to get approval and cover the release form. While we knew that this process would be somewhat difficult, as we offered nothing of value to the owners, we were turned away due to insurance risk much more often than we had anticipated. After visiting more than half a dozen shops, we finally found two that would allow us access to the floor. During these visits, we interviewed the welders on the floor and observed the shop environment recording what we found. Our interview questions ranged from what they welders enjoyed doing in their free time (playing Xbox Live) to the difficulties that they faced on a daily basis (safety).

From those interviews we created user personas which represent fictitious users but have elements of real users incorporated. From those personas and our observations, we found that welders spent a great deal of time thinking and talking about safety but didn’t spend a noticeable amount improving it. We also noticed that despite having many safety products easily accessible in the shop, welders rarely used them as evident from our observations of the dust which frequently covered these products. While we felt that creating a safer atmosphere was important, we also realized that creating another product in the safety space would be met with little excitement by our users and would therefore find little use.

Our Concept Models

Our group also found that shops are often cluttered and difficult to navigate. Yet almost all of the shops had boards on the wall to hang the tools in specific locations but they were still scattered across the shop. We also noticed that the welders spent a fair amount of time looking for these tools. From those two observations, we thought that a system to automatically locate tools would alleviate a noticeable amount of frustration in welders’ lives and therefore be useful. However, before bringing this concept to our users we wanted to develop additional concepts in case the first was not received well.

Our next concept was created from the need for temporary writing areas while working. We realized that the shop environments were not hospitable for paper or pencils on our visits due to the metal shavings, dust and dirt present in all shops. However we also noticed that almost all of the workbenches were made out of metal and realized that a specialized chalk could be created that would mark the surface. Our next concept was born.

Our final concept was developed to address job tracking. One of the welders we visited was a freelancer who received calls to complete various one time jobs. The primary method for communication was the telephone on the wall and the primary means of recording it was a corkboard next to the phone stuck full of random pieces of paper. As the environment wasn’t conducive to using paper and the corkboard looked quite cluttered, we thought there might be room for improvement. To address this issue, we created a set of whiteboard tiles which were magnetic and could be placed anywhere on the walls near the telephone. These tiles would allow the welder to quickly jot down notes about the job (as there was sufficient space to record the details) and then move the job to represent its relation to the existing jobs. When a job was complete the tile could be erased by the swipe of a hand and be ready for the next job.

Our Users’ Thoughts

When we brought our concept models to our users we were met with with mixed feelings. It turned out that the chalk to write on metal had already been created and marketed to welders. A few of our users even showed us a piece of it. While this was somewhat disappointing, it validated our project as it meant we were in tune with things that our users would actually use. The job board concept model was outright rejected, none of the users felt that there was anything wrong with the current system. However, the tool find system was met with cautious curiosity. The users system to like the idea of being able to automatically locate to tools but it was difficult to get them to forget about the implementation of such a product (most believed it impossible to create such a product and we agreed that it would be infeasible now but probably not in the future).

Unfortunately by this point in the project the class was winding down so it was impossible for us to create another iteration of concept models incorporating our feedback. If we wanted to actually make such a product we would continue iterating through several versions.

Conclusion

This class takes the traditional product design philosophy and turns it upside down. Instead of creating a product and trying to figure out how to market it, user oriented design starts with a group of users and creates a product which they desire and then markets it. By creating something that people actually want and find useful, you will be hard pressed not to sell it. As if that were not incentive enough, your customers will become part of your marketing force as they will recommend it to their friends if the product functions well. It is a win for all involved but it requires thinking in a different frame of mind. I think that this is the future of product design.