LÖGR

Overview

Worked in a group to create a realistic and innovative product that promotes sustainable behavior change for individuals through human-centered methodologies. By employing the human-centered approach that places the user at heart of the product development phase, we have arrived at the creation of a faucet attachment to instigate a positive shift in water consumption habits for users. The design process for our concept gerneration is broken down into four stage:

Phase 1 - Identify: Identifying opportunities through design research

Phase 2 - Understand: Analyzing and synthesizing data to gain an in-depth problem understanding

Phase 3 - Conceptualizing: Translating insights to design requirements; concept generation

Phase 4 - Realize: Bringing concept to life through prototyping, visualization & communication

My Role

User Interview

Literature Review

Concept Generation

Prototyping

Testing

Software

Fusion 360

Figma

Tools

3-D Printer

Arduino

CNC

Team Members

Felix Ellwood

Roshan Mohan

Riley Zhou

Timeframe

1 semester

Phase 1 - Identify

We started by gathering the SET Factors that enables the findings of better opportunities for a product to be developed to meet the needs of our targeted stakeholders. Some of the social factors that were considered are inducing social behavior, bringing unconscious awareness to the modern issues of sustainability, bringing a sense of responsibility to the environmental cause, and promoting equity to reduce friction. These factors would allow our understanding of the users needs and behavior through cultural considerations while taking an inclusive approach. Reuse, Recycle, and Repurpose also known as the “The 3 R's” was one of the most important economical factors when generating opportunities. It includes incentives to reduce waste to lower the cost, economically incentivising eco-friendly choices and other relevant economics trends. The incorporation of AR/VR, LLMs/AI, smartphones, machine learning, HCI, and Lidar/Radar were all considered to allow innovation and competitiveness under the technology factors.

Full list is shown below:

Then, we start by identifying our stakeholders that could benefit from our proposed set factors. The stakeholders listed below will be our primarily form of contact for user research as we delve deeper into the product development stage.

Stakeholders:

End Users: Individuals and consumers who will interact with and benefit from the product: HP Employees, HP Customers and wider community associated with HP.

Design Team: Our team responsible for creating the product, including Instructor and the University.

Environmental Organizations: Nonprofits, NGOs, or government agencies focused on sustainability and interested in promoting sustainable behavior change.

Manufacturers and Suppliers: Companies producing parts for the product.

Community and User Groups: Local communities or online groups interested in sustainability and behavior change.

To interact with these stakeholders to understand their needs or want for the product so we can tailor the product to the their specific requirements, we need to identify the research method that can best interact with them:

In-person interviews

Topics Covered

Current Water Consumption Habits and Awareness
Challenges and Experience with Water Monitoring
Preferences for Water Consumption Monitoring Device
Targeted Water Reduction and Motivation
Feedback, Concerns, and Future with the Devices gathered from user researches.

Other methods like user survey were used and online literature review to refined and support our insights gathered from user researches.

Phase 2 - Understand

The key takeaways from online survey were the following:

A large majority of users are open to implementing a software to track their water consumption habits.

Users want an application that track active feedback of their water consumption through live, daily, weekly or monthly feedback.

Key user research takeaways are shown on the right:

Through series of user data gathered from user research our proposed problem statement is created:

Problem Statement: Overconsumption of water is an unsustainable practice that not only depletes vital water resources but also escalates the energy and financial costs associated with water treatment, pumping, and storage, intensifying the strain on sustainability.

During conceptualization phase, we have come to a converging point of figuring out what kind product best fit our stakeholder's needs. And currently there are three competitors that stands out to us the most that could potentially provide us important information regarding there design strengths and weaknesses.

The image below shows the VOA chart of one of our competitors and how it compared against our target VOA chart. Our target VOA is to create a product that is aesthetically pleasing while having core technologies like incorporation of an application interface that allows the user to track, remind and promote healthy water usage. Aesthetically, the product has to be minimalist and non-bulky so that it will appeal to users to integrate it seamlessly into their home environment. We want the user to feel a sense of adventure, security and independence when using the product by knowing that the app connected to the water meter has a variety of personalized features tailored to that individual. This includes real-time feedback of when water has been turned on to how much usage is used throughout the week. We also want to have a positive impact on the user by allowing individuals to perform regular tasks and knowing that the water meter will promote healthy water usage through notifications, automatic water dispensing, and so on.

Phase 3 - Conceptualizing

After analyzing the users research data, we begin the concept generation phase where I came up with 10 potential prototype ideas. Where two of the ten concept is shown on the right:

Then as a group we used the 5-3-5 “Brainstorming method” to iterate on 3 initial designs in order to improve or modify the previous version. At the end our final concept was a combination of everyone in our group. With a couple of concept being filter down we used the positioning and clustering method to better visualize the position of our solutions based on important key design factors. Below is our concept generation process:

Positioning and Clustering

After going through these two methods where some of our concept where combined together into one we implemented a ranking system to further reduce our concepts. The ranking system is based on the metrics listed below:

Formulated Questions and Weight Scale:

How relevant is it to the topic of Sustainable Behaviour Change? (1.0)
How relevant do you think this project is to you? Is this a problem you or people you know experience? (0.6)
How relevant do you think this project is to HP's business and goals as a technology company? (1.0)
How confident are you with your skills required to contribute to this project as part of the team? (0.9)
How realistic is it to get from a concept to tangible prototype in 3 months? (0.9)
How novel/unique is this opportunity? (0.6)
How aligned is it with Social Trends discussed in SET factors and from interviews? (0.6)
How aligned is it with Economic Forces discussed in SET factors and from interviews? (0.4)
How aligned is the opportunity with recent Tech Advancements or trends we discussed in SET factors and from interviews? (1.0)

When we have a couple of concept left we utilzed the dot voting method to finalized our concept:

Phase 4 - Realize

Final Concept:

The mechanism above is our main attachment to the faucet that displays LED to the user as well as an water flow sensor.

Image of the attachment in all three colors

Software Implementation on Figma:

During prototyping and testing rest of the components, we realized that the faucet that we got was too complicated so we decided to scale down into a faucet that was easier to integrate into our final product.

Final Concept

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