Design Thinking Project-Improving the kitchen experience for my users

This is my first ever design thinking project, in-fact my first attempt at anything to do with design and yeah you guessed it right, first medium article too. It revolves around me trying to make kitchen better for my users following a complete non-textbook approach and discovering the design process alongside.

I am working as a software developer in a product company and was always intrigued by the design process, how are the features and designs conceived by various products and services. Being on the opposite end of designing solutions for a problem and completely clueless about where to start I enrolled myself in a UX/UI boot-camp to get the flavor of user experience as a field. So far so good. :)

So for our very first project and to invoke in us the design thinking abilities we were divided into a group of 5 and were each assigned a room of our house with a task to improve the experience of that room for the other 4 users. The rooms being Bedroom, Living room, Bathroom, Kitchen and Dining room. So I had to talk to 4 complete strangers about their kitchen problems and solve them with no set design process and the irony being I myself step in there to just grab snacks at night time. We had to solve the problem keeping in mind only those 4 were our users.

EMPATHIZE STAGE

We followed a complete non-textbook approach to discover the problems of our users and solve them. So for start, I obviously went to google to look for problems people usually face in the kitchens and some fancy stuff people are using in their kitchens to make their lives easier but you’ll see that it wouldn’t be of much use as you discover in this read what problem I actually solved and how. Now that I see it, I did a desk research then before I even knew what the process was and how it is actually an important step of user research. I prepared a quick set of questions to ask my users/peers and we arranged calls to help each other and get started with our first projects

List of questions I prepared

1. Could you describe your kitchen to me ? How many hours/day do you spend there?

2. How happy are you with the kitchen space you have currently? Is there enough room for movement, storage and cooking?

3. How well ventilated do you feel your kitchen is? Could you describe the placement of windows and doors.

4. Does your kitchen have an exhaust/chimney or both- are they efficient enough to improve indoor air quality and reduce any chances of suffocation when say fried food is being prepared?

5. Kitchen usually gets very hot sometimes while cooking. Do you feel this is something that should be addressed or you are adapted to the temperature?

6. What’s your buying pattern for staples/ration? Do you make a purchase in one go or whenever the stuff gets finished? If too much stuff is stocked in one go then how does the storage of these go with you? Reminder for the empties would be helpful?

7. How many electrical appliances do you use in a Kitchen on a regular basis? To name a few- filter, geyser, microwave, induction, mixer grinder. Are there enough electrical plug points for them?

8. Is there a Fridge in the kitchen? If there is too much stuff to carry from your fridge to the kitchen would there be multiple visits or is there some kind of provision?

9. How is the kitchen garbage disposal handled at your home? Do you face an issue of unpleasant smell?

10. Any last thoughts that you would like to share about your kitchen experience

Okay Okay, Now that I see, I understand these questions are not open ended and might be a little leading too. But that’s a learning for me I guess and I am improving on this part.

By the way from this activity I realized talking to complete unknowns about their kitchens can be fun too specially in this pandemic :P C’mon I need some conversations in my life. Plus it was fun answering their questions too about rooms I use on a day to day basis.

DEFINE STAGE

Okay so I feel people are too comfortable with their places and spaces and they don’t directly tell you about the problems that they have or even themselves realize that its a problem. It was challenging bit to dig deeper and collect some helpful insights and figure out some problems.

At this stage I felt I had too many answers from my users yet I couldn’t figure out what I was trying to solve. I tried to list down what the users suggested their key problem areas were. What are the scenarios where they are interacting with the experience in question? What do they like / don’t like? What are the user expectations and how would they describe their ideal experience with Kitchen to find out gaps.

Honestly I was leaning towards the wrong approach then. I was keen to give the users something that I felt might be useful for the users.

One common scenario that I could figure out was many users stock their ration / kitchen supplies like wheat, rice, sugar, oil for a month or two. Keeping a track of what supply is getting emptied when could be a task and is something that can be improved.

I had asked my users about their pattern of buying ration and would a reminder of the empties would be useful, they were affirmative about it but I feel I kind of leaded them into that question.

I even made a quick sketch of Kitchen Buddy App that would help users with preparing a shopping list by giving smart suggestions and reminders about the products that are about to get finished or expire.

Rough Sketch of Kitchen Buddy App

Initial sketch of a Kitchen Buddy App — For tracking the ration supplies

This seemed like a nice solution to propose but when I again went back to the interview insights and recordings I realized there was actually a pattern and a problem of the users that can be solved rather than feeding them what I feel would be helpful - I genuinely empathized with the users here.

PROBLEM I PICKED

Tackling the odor generated by wet waste in the kitchen

Going through the interview nuggets, I realized that even though users are different and have different kitchens but there can be some common things that can be mapped out from the users’ experience of the kitchen.

One scenario I could figure out was that they have common pattern for handling wet waste for kitchen. They have separate bins for dry and wet waste and as they get full (which maybe 2–3 days as well) they empty them out.

Kitchen generates wet waste like peels from the fruits and vegetables, tea leaves etc and since they are more prone to microbes they develop odor very quickly. This may lead to unpleasant smell in the kitchen. This is something that needs to be addressed.

Why solving this problem is Important for the user

Wet waste is something that can’t be avoided in the kitchen and development of odor in the wet garbage is also very common. Hence an unpleasant smell can leave a bad experience for the user in the kitchen.

IDEATE STAGE

This is the stage when I started thinking what can be done to solve the problems of the users. I kept the problem statement in-front of me and listed down top 8 solutions that came to my mind- yes I tried crazy 8 technique

Problem : Wet Kitchen waste leads to odor

1. Keep smaller bins for wet waste so that they get full in a day and need to be emptied in the outside bin more often. (2 users stated that they take out the waste in 2–3 days as the bin doesn’t get full and waste is less)

2. Put stuff like fish, meat etc which develop odor quickly in a smaller bag separately and then throwing it to the bin. This would reduce the chances of odor being developed in the bin

3. Sprinkle the bag of the bin with natural odor-absorbents that are easily available in the kitchen like baking soda or coffee beans

4. Add stuff like lemon peels etc that disguise the odor.

5. Clean the garbage bin regularly as some liquid or other waste can get between the can and the garbage bag.

6. Make use of garbage bags available in the market that are odor resistant.

7. Add pouches of absorbing gel at the bottom of the bin that keeps the bin odor free for a day or two.

8. Using fresheners like odonil in kitchen

SOLUTION

Problem Statement : Tackling the odor generated by wet waste in the kitchen

Actual Problem Statement : How to prompt the users to empty their kitchen garbage bins more often

Solution : Replace larger bins used for disposing wet waste by smaller ones.

Replace your larger bins to smaller ones so that you empty it out more often

Also Keep a sprinkler filled with baking soda besides the garbage bags. Just sprinkle some when you are throwing in easily odor producing trash like left over non vegetarian food.

Baking Soda- Natural odor absorbent for kitchen waste from kitchen itself.

Might sound a bit strange! But let’s look at a pattern here

Three users told me that they throw out the wet waste in the outer bin in 2–3 days because the bin takes about 2–3 days to get full.

Just replacing the larger bins by the smaller ones would make the user empty the bin more often hence drastically reducing the chances of odor as the waste is being removed daily from the kitchen because wet waste produces more odor when left to accumulate as it starts rotting

Also sprinkling the garbage bag with baking soda which is readily available in the kitchen and is a natural odor absorbent specially when the trash contains easily odor producing waste like left over non vegetarian food.

This solution basically targets the cause of the problem and preventing the accumulation of the waste actually prevents the leftovers and wet waste from decaying which actually is the major cause of the unpleasant smell coming from the kitchen.

TESTING PHASE

I booked another zoom call with my group to tell them the solution I was proposing and getting their feedback. I asked them to rate my idea out of 5

I Really loved how both of the solutions I provided worked in tandem together to match individual preferences of my users. At the same time really got some points to think upon like feasibility of stocking of baking soda supply based on the user feedback.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Design can be really powerful and has the capability to change the world! But you don’t need to be a specialist👈🏻 all you need is to pay heed to the user.

Putting users and experiences first is the key to unlocking the potential of any idea, product or business.

REFLECTIONS AND LEARNINGS

1. We usually try and think about problems from the scenarios that we are in and interaction with the users generally provide a different perspective to even most common problems.

1. Users are usually very comfortable with the things around them until they actually use an improved version
2. Not every solution you come up with is gonna be unique but user doesn’t even want just a unique one..all they need is a solution
3. Design thinking and the whole process is actually very ambiguous..sometimes you feel you have come up with a great solution and the very next second you might feel the need to have another user interview

FROM HERE I AM EXCITED TO..

1. actually be able to frame more conversation starting questions and to be able to develop that knowledge of identifying the user pain points.
2. be able to develop my own unique sense and style of problem identification, understanding and solving.
3. understand how the great solutions we have around us were conceived via this process of design thinking and user interviews.