The Process of Designing a Wallet

In the second week of classes, our task in the design studio was to interview someone and based on those results, to design an ideal wallet for their needs. In this post I will be talking about how the process went, some of the challenges and what I hope to do next time.

We first began by designing our idea of an ideal wallet which I found was a good way to think about what kind of things are essential in a wallet. Then we began our interviews with our partner, talking about our existing wallets and what we like and dislike about them. This was a good way to get the more basic level of need for our partner such as aesthetics and function.

Next we “Dug deeper” to see how they felt about their wallets and what their reasons were for their current, chosen wallet. The questions asked here were quite open-ended to make the user feel relaxed which is important so they feel comfortable enough with the interviewer to give more details about anything they felt was relevant, as mentioned by Cooper-Wright (2015).This helped to solidify what needs they had and what was the most important.

We then reflected on the answers we gathered from the interview and ordered them into Goals & Wishes and Insights. This was a way to first jot down the absolute, obvious needs that our partners had (Goals & Wishes) and what we could see they needed that perhaps they didn’t directly say (Insights).

For the next step we sketched quick ideas for different wallet designs from the initial interview and showed our partners for feedback. I liked knowing that we would have a chance to gain feedback before we finalised our design as it allowed both the designer (me) and the user (my partner) to further solidify our thoughts and see if we were on the same page. Plus, we could make improvements before we came up with a final design.

Then we made a final design and created a quick prototype of which we allowed the user to touch and get a feel for the size of the wallet.

After making the prototype we both found that the size could be changed as it didn’t best fit my partner’s needs. This shows how important the repetition of these processes is to create the best possible product.

However, if I were to further develop this wallet for the user, I think it would be effective to observe them using their wallet in a more real setting. Ko (n.d.) explains about Contextual Inquiry, where the research is done in the user’s day to day life, helping to reveal more insights into what exactly they require.

References:

Cooper-Wright, M. (June 2015). How to Run a Design Research Interview. Medium. https://medium.com/design-research-methods/how-to-run-a-design-research-interview-576d14806dfd

Ko, A. J. (n.d.) How to Understand Problems. Design Methods. https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/design-methods/how-to-understand-problems.html

#DES100