Martin Charlier - Designing Connected Products - raincloud.eu

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Effective Design for Connected Products BLN IoT 2015 - Cambridge

Martin Charlier @marcharlier [email protected]

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Hello

I’m an independent design consultant & co-founder of Rain Cloud.

Previously: - FJORD

(Digital strategy, UX, Service design) - Random International

(New media art, physical-digital) - Frog Design

(Industrial design, Design research)

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Designing Connected Products

I’m a co-author of ‘Designing Connected Products’.

Release date: May 2015

It’s a practical book aimed at UX design and technology experts.

I’ve written two chapters: One about industrial design and one about interface types.

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• Aligning design disciplines

• Effective prototyping

• Hacking perceptions

• Prioritising design requirements

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• Aligning design disciplines

• Effective prototyping

• Hacking perceptions

• Prioritising design requirements

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Connected products involve many different facets of design you need to consider.

- UI and Industrial Design aren’t the whole picture.

- You’ll need a team that collectively covers all facets.

- Some facets are more important than others for particular products.

- You need a design approach that integrates all of these together.

Designing Connected Products - Chapter 1

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To align these facets, translation and collaboration across disciplines is required.

- This isn’t just about designers, it includes software & hardware engineering, API design, product management…

- War rooms, a shared language and a manifestation of your product vision that is discipline-agnostic help.

“A prototype is worth

a thousand meetings.”

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You might have to make hardware decisions that keep your options open to defer the design decision making.

Example: Berg Little Printer (✞) - Consistent visual language across mobile UI, bridge device

and edge device. - CMF & typography across physical and digital. - Paper insert as a means to defer design decisions, no etching

or embossing.

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• Aligning design disciplines

• Effective prototyping

• Hacking perceptions

• Prioritising design requirements

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There are prototyping methods that let you answer fundamental questions before requiring significant investment of time or technology.

Is the overall concept desirable?

What is it like to live with this

product?

What does the world look like

with this product in it?

Let’s look at a few…

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Media from the future:

- Amazon starts new product development by writing the press release first, then the FAQs,…

- “Iterating on a press release is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!).”

- Other examples: Write a news article about the product.

- Flipchart session: A print advert or ‘design the box’.

Amazon product development: http://www.quora.com/What-is-Amazons-approach-to-product-development-and-product-management/answer/Ian-McAllister More on Amazon: http://brendansterne.com/2013/11/21/amazon-product-management-working-backwards/ Design the box: http://www.gamestorming.com/games-for-design/design-the-box/

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Wizard Of Oz prototyping:

- A (hidden) human plays the role of the system or technology. - The user can experience and react to a product concept even

though its technology is unproven.

User experiencing the prototype. Behind the scenes triggering based on user action.

Credit: Ericsson Labs, Marcus Nyberg

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Video sketching:

- Can be filmed Wizard Of Oz prototype or narrated storyboard. - Useful because it is shareable with others. - Many audiences: Validate with users; agree with stakeholders;

unite under a common vision; create your tech requirements. - Keep it ‘sketchy’ - you don’t want to draw attention to unresolved

detail, but the broader vision.

Stills from a video prototype for the Economizer, a home electricity use monitoring project from Cooper Design for the Environmental Defense Fund. More info: http://www.cooper.com/journal/2008/12/economizer

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Split your product experience up in order to prototype individual aspects as early as possible.

- Create a ‘live with’ prototype to refine the experience in your products context of use.

- Prototyping what you might consider tangential aspects of your product. E.g. the user manual or setup procedures.

BERG / Timo Arnall

BRCK - After the user experience.

15http://www.brck.com/2014/09/after-the-user-experience/#.VP32gFM7pkI

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• Aligning design disciplines

• Effective prototyping

• Hacking perceptions

• Prioritising design requirements

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<disclaimer>

The following is not a critique of products, but just an observation I find interesting.

</disclaimer>

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I am going to show you 6 different products, about things as diverse as…

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PETS

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MUSIC

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HEATING

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TV ENTERTAINMENT

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HOME

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Here is what they look like:

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Thermostat Smart Home Hub Connected TV box

Multipurpose Sensor Cloud music playerPet monitor

In case you were wondering:

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I’m not saying these are bad products.

It’s just something I think is worth thinking about.

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Industrial design is a powerful communication tool.

- Brand recognition - Projecting your values - Desirable products - Don Norman’s three levels of design

are helpful lenses to apply: Behavioural, Visceral and Reflective.

Three dimensions of a product:

- Behavioral: Functional and usability, how it makes you behave.

- Visceral: Attractiveness, initial impact of the appearance.

- Reflective: Prestige, what it makes you think, what it makes others think about you.

Don Norman - Emotional Design

28http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/1070/531

‘Gender coded design’ - Karin Ehrnberger

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Many less functional aspects that influence the perception and experience a user has.

- Knobfeel, Weight, Texture, Materials - A B&O remote is 3 times the weight

of an average remote. - In consumer electronics, it’s

common to add artificial weights to the assembly to influence the value perception.

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Mood boards, or visual language collages are a tool to establish and document these aspects.

- Select and define a desired direction.

- Communicate across disciplines. - Exclude and identify what is

*not* the desired direction.

Paul Backett, “Sketching: Approaching the Paper with Purpose http://www.core77.com/posts/20422/Sketching-Approaching-the-Paper-with-Purpose-by-Paul-Backett

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• Aligning design disciplines

• Effective prototyping

• Hacking perceptions

• Prioritising design requirements

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A single connected ‘product’ can be made up of many separate physical parts.

- Few device archetypes and category conventions to build on.

- No interface platforms or building blocks to work with.

- So where to start?

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ConspicuousInconspicuous

Rare interaction

Frequent interaction

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ConspicuousInconspicuous

Rare interaction

Frequent interaction

What your users touch & see the most.

Touched infrequently but very visible.

Rarely touched and hidden away.

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ConspicuousInconspicuous

Rare interaction

Frequent interaction

- Visceral and reflective design. - A symbol for your service / brand. - Help users display the product at its

best.

- Strike the right balance between representing your service / brand and integrating the device into its environment.

- Both practical and aesthetic concerns.

- Favour practicality over appearance.

- Make the rare interactions simple: Big reset button in the middle?

- Design to be cheap (DFM)

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But: You might want to challenge this model as a thought experiment.

Future Routers - Goldsmiths University / TalkTalk

• Aligning design disciplines Start with a product vision that unites disciplines.

• Effective prototypingPrototype what it feels like, not just technology.

• Hacking perceptionsUse ID as a communication tool, not just packaging.

• Prioritising design requirementsUse interaction and placement as design drivers.

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Summary

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Thank you.

Martin Charlier

@marcharlier

[email protected]