User Centered Design - Move Me

Human Centered Design & Engineering, Master's Program

Design Question:

How might we encourage physical activity in 18- to 35-year-olds residing in the greater Seattle area who binge-watch?

Overall Process:

Identify problem area and design question
Generate research questions and target users
Conduct survey to understand general binge-watching behavior
Conduct in-home interviews to dive deep into how and why people binge-watch and work out in context of the participant's living space
Conduct diary studies to understand specific behavior and satisfaction over the course of a week
Determine design requirements based on research findings
Sketch and ideate design solutions
Narrow down on one design to prototype at low fidelity
Conduct usability tests with prototype

Surveys:

We conducted a survey to conveniently query on the television and exercise habits of a large sample of individuals, 18 years or older, across the world. By looking at the distribution of responses among our binge-watcher sample, we could identify commonalities among individuals in terms of their demographic characteristics, what devices they used to watch television, or how frequently they engaged in physical activity. This helped us to not only better define our target users, but also to develop interview questions by identifying the areas we would want to probe more deeply.

In-Home Interviews:

We used in-home interviews to gather qualitative data from seven binge-watchers in the Seattle area, especially information around their goals. In-home interviews allowed for us to observe where the bingewatching takes place, as well as discover the motivations behind the participants’ binge-watching and workout behaviors. In many cases, participants had never examined their own actions so closely. In-home interviews was a way for us to probe and ask “why?” to their initial question responses, allowing them to further ponder their own attitudes and actions before expressing the reasons behind them.

Diary Study:

We asked four participants within our target user base to report workout and binge-watching behavior over the course of five consecutive days. Comprised over the course of weekdays and weekends, we asked participants to fill out a short digital journal at the end of each day. Diary studies allowed us to ask targeted questions around time, frequency, context, and motivation. The goal of the diary study research method was to obtain much richer self-reported insights over an extended period of time to identify behavioral patterns around the daily lives of binge-watchers.

Personas:

We developed personas based on the research findings to inspire and inform our design ideas.

Sketches & Ideation:

We started by doing 30 sketches and narrowed down to three by referencing our personas and how they would use the design solution.

We pasted all our design ideas on the wall, along with the personas, and then used colored sticky notes to 'vote' on our favorites. We then discussed the finalists and determined which three would best fit our users' needs.

Lo-Fi Prototype & User Testing:

The team narrowed down their thirty sketches to three final design ideas: A motion-sensing game where users control avatars based off their favorite TV characters, smart suggestions and contextual alerts based on existing user app data, and character immersive workouts viewed on their TV or streaming device. After further brainstorming and discussion, the design team selected the Smart Suggestions & Contextual Alerts as the final design solution to start prototyping and testing with real users.

The prototype was built in Axure and printed out for testing.

Testing included:

Pre-test questionnaire
Tasks based on specific scenarios
Post-test questionnaire
Desirability words (see below)