Paper Prototype

SCENARIO

You are working at a design strategy consultancy and you have been asked by management to come up with some new concepts for wearable tech products. Your team is given the challenge of a system that combines a smart watch and a smart phone, and asked to develop a product concept that involves synchronization of data between the two smart devices.

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DESIGN

Inspired by personal experiences, I came up with a concept to prevent the consumption and waste of expiring foods. One of my pet peeves is laying out all of my food ingredients to prepare to cook only to realize that an item is expired...especially milk.  
 
My concept works by fetching purchase and expiration dates from a food item's scanned barcode onto the mobile app, which then synchronizes to a smartwatch to send alerts regarding soon-to-expire items. Users then have the option to do three things with the expiring item: 1) add it to a grocery list, 2) find coupons to buy more, 3) find a recipe to use it up.

INITIAL SKETCHES

Very quick, rough sketches of the design concept were created to explore how to pair the mobile device and smartwatch. 

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PAPER PROTOTYPE

Below is a description of the paper protoypes (for both the watch and mobile device) I created to test my​ concept.

MOBILE 

The mobile app element of my concept allows users to take one of four actions: 1) scan a new food item, view grocery list, view saved coupons, and view saved food recipes. 

To initiate the alert system, the first step is to scan the food item's barcode using a camera on a mobile device. The barcode will contain information about the purchase and expiration date of the food item. Next, users must verify that the scan fetched accurate information including the item type and purchase date. From there, information about the food item is stored in the cloud until it is approaching its expiration date. 

​WATCH

When a food item is close to expiring, users will receive alerts on their smartwatch. If a user taps on the alert, they have the option to add the expiring item to a grocery list, search for coupons to buy more of that item, and view recipes that uses that expiring item. Users have the ability to view and save coupons and recipes directly from their smartwatch which can be later viewed on the mobile app. 

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ANALYSIS

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

The two participants I conducted usability tests with described my concept as useful, and paper prototypes as intuitive. One participant commended me on my drawing skills--mentioning that it was "easy to read the text and identify  the icons." Both participants said that my concept would be most useful to health and fitness enthusiasts, and people who buy food ingredients to store for future usage, but not for "lazy people because it's unrealistic for people to take pictures of their food before storing it in the fridge."  

After each usability test session, I asked participants for feedback in areas where they experienced confusion or hurdles. Based on my observations and participant feedback, my design can be improved by considering the following: 

• Allow users to set when they would like to receive alerts about expiring foods. In other words, users should have the option to receive alerts X number of days before the item expires
• Implement a 'back' button on screens of both the mobile and watch apps
• Implement a 'home' button on screns of the mobile app
• Add text to the watch's alert screen to make it more obvious that it's an alert 
• Incorporate a scrolling list expiring items on the mobile app 
• Allow users to see what other food items are expiring on the watch app 
• Provide users the option to find food recipes that use multiple expiring food items
  
• Come up with an alternative to taking photos of food items  

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CONCLUSION

Even with paper prototypes, I was able to effectively test my concept and gain valuable feedback about how I can improve my concept and designs. Though my prototypes were very preliminary, it still communicated the core functions and abilities of my concept. If I were to continue ideating on this problem space, I would improve on my designs after conducting more usability tests to get a better idea of reoccuring issues. Overall, paper prototyping allowed me to quickly receive feedback and share my a rough concept before committing more time and energy.  

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VIDEO DEMO