Product Design

Each year Goodyear & Case Western host a national product development competition. In 2019 I recruited and lead a team of KSU graduate students to a top five outcome competing against teams from Penn State, MIT and others.

Conducted user interviews and advocated for the user perspective in conclusions on pain points, wants and needs.
Developed and tested a mobile app prototype that facilitates experiences of improved well-being in the form of social infrastructure.

The Problem
The Solution
The Process
The observations of users
The design problem
The design problem

Our Findings & Recommendations

The UX Initiative
What Target Users Told Us
The "use-case" derived from user inputs
The Rational & Theory related to what users told us
Our Prototype
Branding & Illustration
Takeways

The Problem

Provided by Goodyear in advance In a near distant future the "rider" is no longer selecting tires to purchase or managing auto service. Generate a user research driven design that can leverage Goodyear's brand assets in its own third space.

The Solution

Easy and affordable access to third places by driverless fleet optimized for social infrastructure rather than shortest or cheapest trip heuristics currently used by rideshare providers like Uber.

Our users want more, more spontaneous, convenient and safe transportation to third places where they can be more relaxed, feel comfortable, where others return time and again to socialize, to relax, and to enjoy the company of those around them.

The Team

Slack played an instrumental role in my efforts to both recruit and lead a team for the competition. We ended up a team of five from destinations as far afield as the Carolinas that included experience design practitioners from Ford Motors, Duke Energy, and others.

We worked exclusively remote through Slack and members made the drive to Case Western for the two day in person event on campus.

The team was appreciative of my effort to create an opportunity for us to participate. Three of the five remarked several times about how engaging it was to work with both design methods and social and political philosophy. We had numerous long and enjoyable conversations about Oldenburg's sociology and Martha nussbaum's moral theory.

It was a bit rocky getting everyone to participate at first. I produced the majority of the work to get the team into the competition on my own. After my proposal was selected for the competition the team became willing (with one outlier) to work together on the submitted and accepted concept based on Oldenburg's third place.

My approach to getting buy in from the team was to make the project meaningful and interesting by trying to solve a real human problem with technology. I lead discussions on Slack that delegated tasks from early target user interviews to wireframing and product road maps by pointing out the perceived strengths of team members and relevant tasks for each.

The day of the competition It became much more difficult to maintain buy in for the work we had completed before the competition. In the end one of the team members presented his own ideas which ran counter to the entire idea of the team competition, but there was little to do but shrug and enjoy the group of great people from across the US participating in person.

The Process

Looking for the constraints that dictate potential solutions with interviews

Lead team in collective interview question writing
Team members each conducted interviews
Wrote project brief

Synthesizing observations about users into a meaningful and actionable problem statement

Lead literature survey with team on slack channel.
Lead framing statements initiative with team on slack
Wrote project brief

Target Users told us

About their sense of difficulty making connections and feeling a sense of belonging and relatedness.

Kathryn Age: 22 told us, “It’s all hard. I don’t know how to meet new people. I don’t know how to make new friends. I just stick with the old friends from high school and college.”

We imagined usecases

It's Friday! I want to work late — go out for live music and dinner and sleep in late!

Lunch (M-F)
Dinner
Lunch (Weekend)

11:00 - 16:00
17:30 – 22:00
12:00 – 16:00

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Current users of social media like Meetup, Eventbright, and Facebook & Facebook Local; also rideshare drivers and riders from Lyft and Uber.

Initial research began with a literature review of autonomous vehicles. This literature focused on interiors, safety and convenience. I was skeptical of any design solution for the form of the vehicle or interior that would shape an experience of third place.

The term "third place" was popularized by sociologist Phd Rey Oldenburg in his book, "The Great Good Place". I quickly found this gem of an observation by Oldenberg that bridged the design problem with his sociology.

"What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably — a“place on the corner,” real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile."
‍

Interview participants reported using MeetUp.com to organize social engagements they found rewarding

This early product roadmap shows the combination of Facebook Local and ridesharing.

This interactive prototype I produced in Principal is one of three user-flows created. This flow shows the finding of an event to attend and the booking of a ride following the selection.

Illustrations and branding were designed using stock vector elements

Key Takeaways

The literature review helped define what is at issue in Third Places

‍Product design can benefit from humanities training by anchoring the process in disciplines with a proven history of progress in articulating aspect of human concer
Interviews / conversations confirmed wants and needs while also raising doubts

‍That a product like social ride-share could address a human need in ways that are likely to contribute to wellbeing is no guarantee that people will use it
Products born from UX initiatives no matter how well executed can be difficult to defend against common business concerns like competition

‍Case Western school of management Phd's asked one question about the proposed product. "What would stop Uber from implementing the same features?

See the full study

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Product Design

Each year Goodyear & Case Western host a national product development competition. In 2019 I recruited and lead a team of KSU graduate students to a top five outcome competing against teams from Penn State, MIT and others.

Table of Contents

The Problem

Provided by Goodyear in advance In a near distant future the "rider" is no longer selecting tires to purchase or managing auto service. Generate a user research driven design that can leverage Goodyear's brand assets in its own third space.

The Solution

The Team

The Process

To empathize with users during our observations, we separately record the “What's”, “How's” and “Why's” of a person’s observations

Looking for the constraints that dictate potential solutions with interviews

Looking for the constraints that dictate potential solutions with interviews

Synthesizing observations about users into a meaningful and actionable problem statement

An on brand application that tests well with our target audience and lesser sophisticated users in usability testing and in person interviews

Milestones & Docs

Target Users told us

About their sense of difficulty making connections and feeling a sense of belonging and relatedness.

We imagined usecases

It's Friday! I want to work late — go out for live music and dinner and sleep in late!

The Problem Defined

In a near distant future the "rider" is no longer selecting tires to purchase or managing auto service. Generate a user research driven design that can leverage Goodyear's brand assets in its own third space.

Easy and affordable access to third places. Spaces where people are more relaxed, feel comfortable, and to which they return time and again to socialize, to relax, and to enjoy the company of those around them.

Current users of social media like Meetup, Eventbright, and Facebook & Facebook Local; also rideshare drivers and riders from Lyft and Uber.

Current users of social media like Meetup, Eventbright, and Facebook & Facebook Local; also rideshare drivers and riders from Lyft and Uber.

An on brand application that tests well with our target audience and lesser sophisticated users in usability testing and in person interviews

Interview participants reported using MeetUp.com to organize social engagements they found rewarding

This early product roadmap shows the combination of Facebook Local and ridesharing.

This interactive prototype I produced in Principal is one of three user-flows created. This flow shows the finding of an event to attend and the booking of a ride following the selection.

Illustrations and branding were designed using stock vector elements

Key Takeaways

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Card three

learn about humanities based business...