Project overview
TEGG is a public laundry system
helping user to have clean and fresh laundry effortlessly.
My Role
The Challenge
Creating better public laundry experience by redesigning the washing machine and the process.
This project was done with a Taiwanese student, Yun-Shan Li, and two Singaporean students, Qiu-Hua Phuar and Yi-Liang Chen in 2013. The concept of parallel leadership was applied in our team. Therefore, intensive meetings were necessary for better communication. As a class project, we almost did the whole project together. For example, in the phase of ideation, each of us need to proposed at least three ideas among every meeting. We iterated and modified the design process and eventually came out with the final idea together. Afterward, I adapted this project into an academic research paper which was presented at the Conference of Taiwan Institute of Kansei.
Research
The problem
How was your latest experience of using “public washing machine”?
We may have had the experience of using public washing machine when we lived in a student dorm or apartment. There are lots of common problems such as inconvenient, dirty, unsecure…such negative feelings while using public laundry machine. In this project, we focus on the public laundry machine in student dorm. We aim to redesign the public laundry system for creating a better laundry experience.
How did users feel? Our goal is to make an innovative lanudry system which can make users have better using experience and feelings. According to the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, feelings are also an influencing factor to users’ behavior. Therefore, in this project, we focus on not only functions but also “feelings” of laundry experience. We tried to consider all the possible affective factors in every part of the design process. For example, the emotional images from the appearance and style of the machine and emotional reaction while using the system.
"I hate people touching my clothes. So I need to pay lots of attention on the washing time. If I don't pick up my laundry on time, the next person who wants to use the same washing machine will take them out for me. I really don't like that...However, I don't always have the time waiting for that."
——User no.2
Outline of research process
The research of this project is based on Contextual Inquiry. Referring to the contextual design process, we discussed design methods we had learned and developed a design process that could fit to the condition of this project. (Time and budget limitation, Class requirements…etc.) Following is the comparison of the processes. It lasts about 6 months from research to evaluation.
Observation and Interview
The inquiry was divided into two parts. First, we observed physical environment of the laundry room of the student dorm in National Cheng Kung University. Also, we observed how people doing their laundry. Pictures and notes were took during the observation.
Second, according to the method - Shadowing, we followed two of our friends who live in the dorm doing their laundry. We recorded every detail by notes and video. Besides, we did a quick interview after they finished their laundry.
Working Models
To capture more details of users’ work, three work model based on Contextual Design were built. The sequence model, cultural model and physical model present the process, cultural issues and physical environment while users doing their laundry. Related information we observed were listed in each diagram and “small red lightings” were marked as the difficulties and conflicts during the process. As a result, the models were very helpful for group discussion, especially for the following brainstorming. Following is the sequence model of user 1.
Design Requirements
Based on the observation and interview, we organized the data by “Affinity Diagramming” and came out several insights. These insights point out the similar difficulties user had met. As a result, three main design requirements came out – simplified Complexity, assurance and humanizing experience. Also, we concluded the “affective attributes” from our contextual inquiries and user interviews.
Persona
According to our initial inquiry and insights, we built two personas: students Rachel and businessman William. We listed all the characteristics of them as following.
This two persona led us to develop our design ideas and help us making decisions when we need to know the priority of design requirements.
Mood Board
According to previous research, we observed that users reveal some emotional reactions while doing laundry. Therefore, we concluded several affective attributes by building Mood Board and Emotional Map for them. These map help our team to have common consensus of what our product/service would feel like.
Design
Ideation
Based on the insights and persona, we did brainstorming together and sketched great amounts of design ideas. Several design ideas were selected after many times intensive discussions.
During the process of brainstorming, scenarios of some design ideas were built and were modified repeatedly in order to develop the final design idea.
Following are the main scenes of final scenario.
Scenario
The Interface
We did several paper prototyping for interface design, trying to simplify the working procedure. Following is the final interface and how it works. The icons and actions are designed to make people feel easy, simple and clean.
Prototype
We prototyped TEGG by virtual 3D modeling and communicated with the traditional wood master worker in order to produce our physical model.
