Overview

Course: +Acumen/IDEO Human-Centered Design 201: Prototyping 

Timeframe: 5 weeks 

Tools: Sharpie, Paper, Post-Its, scrap materials

Role: User experience (UX) design

I led a team of 5 designers at McGraw Hill to quickly prototype and iterate upon product designs, services, interactions, and environments using the techniques and best practices utilized by IDEO.org. We completed the course to satisfy our company’s professional development requirements, but we primarily used the opportunity to bond, get inspiration, and learn about each other’s perspectives and approaches to user-centered design. We created two prototypes using household materials and one digital prototype. 

Workshop 1: Make it Real

How might we design a product to improve health in everyday places?

Workshop 2: Build to Think

How might we design a service to improve health in everyday places?

Workshop 3: Plan for Field Tests

How might we design an environment to improve health in everyday places?

Workshop 4: In the Field

During a dry run of the first iteration of our prototype, we learned:

• The solar-powered outlets needed more investigation, as did the setup, take down, and portability design/functionality/logistics. 

• Users needed the height and angle of the umbrella to be adjustable so they could manipulate the amount of shade. 

• We would need to have a better idea of what tables are available outside in order to plan the appropriate setup materials.

With these points in mind, we refined our design to better support potential users who might want to take advantage of our Out of Office workspace.

Final Thoughts

This course reminded me just how efficiently you can come up with potential solutions when you have passionate team members, a plan of attack (a process), and some basic tools. While designing the service prototypes it was humbling to uncover all the behind the scene roles required to deliver a product or service to users, when and where they need it. We all appreciated the opportunity to create things with our hands and work collaboratively. What I valued most was discovering the hidden talents of my teammates and figuring out how to make the best use of our resources at hand.