THE CHALLENGE
This project was a part of the DEI 624: Understanding the Consumer Universe course, in the Master’s of Digital Experience Innovation program. The class was divided into teams and asked to develop a product that would help Canadians survive the harsh Canadian winters. The assignment was given the title “the Great Canadian Winter Challenge,” and at the end of the term all projects were to be presented in a Dragons’ Den style product pitch presentation to three business leaders.
THE APPROACH
The process began with a consumer research study to find the main things that people struggle with during the winter. As a class we developed a survey and sent it out to as many people as we could. We then split up the questions between groups for coding. We used this information to brainstorm product ideas, first individually then as a group. We categorized these ideas, selected our favourite 5, and narrowed that down to our top favourite. At this point we knew we wanted our solution to focus on encouraging children to remain physically active and spent time out-of-doors in the winter.
We continued to iterate on this concept, eventually deciding on a product that would use wearable technology and video games to encourage children to play outside more in the winter. We then conducted a second study to see what features would interest parents, and conducted small, informal interviews to see what children think of the product once we had the first draft of our content developed.
There were many components to our final product, and so the work was split between group members. However, all of the components needed to fit together so, while we worked separately, we needed to make sure we were checking in with each other frequently. The portion I was mainly responsible for was the app for parents, and I needed to work with my group members to make sure that it matched the other parts of the product in terms of it’s look and features. I started working with the app as sketches and low-fidelity mockups, constantly checking in and comparing my wireframes to those of my team members, and the end result was a navigational high-fidelity mockup.
THE RESULTS
The full True North product included a set of gloves, a video game, a storyline for the video game, and an app to involve parents. The app shows parents their child’s activity records (using a step count and heart rate monitor), weather warnings for their area so that they can decide if it is safe for their child to play outside, a call home feature that sends a signal to their child to let them know it is time to return home, and an optional GPS feature that would be connected to the product for if it goes missing, or to let the parent know where their child is playing. The app is meant to be simple, making it straightforward to use so that it takes very little of the parent’s attention.
During the Dragon’s Den style product presentations at the end of the term, the “Dragons” were given a set amount of fictional money to “invest” between the four products. At the end of the presentations the amounts were announced to the class, and our product- True North- received the largest amount of “investment.”