"iWater" was a group project finished during Product III. I cooperated with my three classmates, Wenjun, Yuewen and Jiali in the whole process. I took the role of group leader and UX Designer. We conducted research, brainstorm, sketches together and later Wenjun and me finished the digital part while Yuewen and Jiali refined the physical design part.
2016. 03 - 2016. 06 @ Product Design III
Persona, Storyboard, Wireframing, Hi-fi UI Design, 3D Modeling and Rendering
Sketch, Illustrator, Axure, Solidworks, Keyshot
Water pollution is more and more serious in China. However, unlike tap water in America or Europe which can be drunk directly, the tap water in China is too far under the standard to be potable. Because filter systems haven’t been commonly used in Chinese families. Therefore, people are worried about the quality of their drinking water. In the course, Product Design III, we focused on how to help Chinese families get easy access to purified drinking water.
In order to know more about the current status that how Chinese families get purified water and their behaviors related to drinking water, we first learned from published materials and then conducted user interviews with several families.
From many related information online about Chinese market of water purifiers and customers’ attitude, we got some insights of both quantitive and qualitive data.
We talked with 6 families (19 people ) to know their habits of using water and their opinions about the water quality.
Research Insights:
1. Only a few families in China installed filter system in their homes, much due to the inconvenience of installation and maintenance.
2. Families can hardly know the specific quality of their drinking water nor the effect of purification.
3. People drink water in many different usages ( taking medicine, milk, coffee and so on ).
Base on the research, I created the persona of our target users.
Sandra: “My son often gets sick, so I am always concerned with family health, especially healthy drinking water, due to the serious water pollution in China. If there is any kind of appliance to help us get easy access to purified water, I am willing to spend more money”
Feedback:
We showed this story board to 5 people we interviewed before, they all gave us positive feedback that they thought this product can help them getting purified drinking water at home.
Users’ feedbacks encouraged us, then we began to prototype the product. Yuewen Luo and JIali Qiu designed the physical prototype, while Wenjun Zhou and I did the digital part.
Sketch
Cross Section
1. Use specific TDS (Total dissolved solids) record to show the quality of both input and output water.
2. Make what water is used for represent the temperature intuitively, like “for coffee” and “for milk”.
3. A reservation include time and temperature, also allow user to set a repeat, like “for coffee at 7am every work day”
Design Review:
Our teacher and classmates made a review of our prototype. They approved our design and gave us advice.
Two major suggestions :
1. show the current water temperature on the home page.
2. show the standard of potable water as a reference.
After prototyping and design review, we made the final high fidelity mock up. Wenjun Zhou made the 3D rendering, and I did the visual design of the app.
