My First UX Case Study: Designing a Dining Room

‘How does the User require their dining room to be designed’. This problem statement helped me to kickstart my UX journey.

Re-inventing the dining experience — Your dining room is a place where your family and friends come together and bond, be it over a quick breakfast every morning or usual dinner every night or leisurely Sunday brunch. Yet, it is hardly ever a priority when setting up a home.

This is a case study on the design process that I had followed to resolve the issues faced by the user in the dining room.

The Design Approach

The design process I followed consists of the following steps:

1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test/Feedback

Each step was a learning experience, Empathize with the users by interviewing them, to define the problem areas in the dining room to which I ideate a solution to resolve the issue. The solution is then prototyped and tested with the user for the feedback. And with the feedback I re-iterate the design process until I get the final prototype a the solution.

The Design Process

Step 1 — Empathize:

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

-Albert Einstein

The first stage of Design thinking project is to interview the users to find their problems in the dining area. Framing the right questions to find the problems faced without bias was the first step. The questions should also bring out the difficulties or the gap between the design which the user hasn’t realized even exists.

After the user interview I define the problems which the user had specified which is the next step of the Design process.

Step 2 — Define:

“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

- Thomas Edison

With the inputs from the empathize stage I define the experience gap or the problems faced by the user in the dining room.

Defining stage is to construct a point of view base on user’s need and insights. The main factors which contributed to the experience gap between the user and the dining area identified after empathize stage were:

• Warming the food
• Space constraints
• Refilling water while dining
• Storage space for cutleries

The next step is to create ideas to resolve the above specified problems which I had defined from the user interview.

Step 3 — Ideate:

Ideation is a creative process where we generate ideas as a solution to the experience gap identified.

I had concluded to the following ideas with respect to the inputs from the defining stage/step:

To address,

• The space constraints : A storage space under the table
• The issue of keeping the food warm : This can be addressed by 3 different solutions which I could come up which are -Keeping an oven nearby the dining table, Keeping a table top induction, A hot pan on the table.
• Difficulty in passing the Dishes : A turn table in the center of the dining table.

I narrowed down my ideas into the following :

-Induction Pad on the turn table to save space also to keep the food warm.

-Storage space under the table

Step 4 — Prototype:

The table designed is an arch edged square with a seating capacity of 8 people. The seating is on a bench, which is of the same shape as the edge of the table so that when the table is not in use the bench can be pushed inside the table and there is no loss of space in the seating arrangement.

A turn table with an induction heating pad is placed on the top of the table to address the issue of keeping the food warm and also to pass the dishes while dining. The induction pad has to be connected to a power socket, through a power cable which can be connected externally.

The dining table designed has a draw under the table, for each person seated, to resolve the cutlery storage space issue.

Also it has a water filter fitted on the bottom of the table which is connected to a water supply when in need. It can be connected and disconnected as and when required.

A plank compartment is provided to keep items which are necessary, such as towels, napkins, dry fruits, containers and so on…

Testing:

The initial design of the table had no water filter and the shape of the dining table was circular.

During the feedback session of testing the initial design, users had suggested few changes that they required on the table which are as follows:

User 1 : Does not require a circular table which will create space and seating issues

User 2: Requires a water refilling unit on the table so that they need not get up while dining to refill the water.

Addressing to the feedbacks following changes were made to the design :

1. Table shape was changed to arched edge square
2. Water filter placed under the table with a faucet on the table.

Key Learnings:

Every design of a product is based on the User and User Interaction

Discoverability and Human Centric Design (HCD) is what makes a good design. Testing or Feedback being the most important phase, we learn how the user interacts with the design and make changes to ease the user experience and make the user experience beautiful.

Every problem has a solution, think more and design less for a pleasurable user experience and a beautiful design.