Nostalgia
Product Design
Reducing household waste and sharing and extending memories
Duration
2 months
Role
Designer,
Researcher,
3D Modeler
Tools
Rhino, Figma, Typeform, Miro
Background & Overview
Residents of apartment in the city often struggle with decluttering. Precious items of the past carry too much nostalgia to be discarded. The Nostalgia Booth presents a streamlined and sentimental system for residents to safely pass along these items --- sharing their memories while giving others the opportunities to forge new ones.
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Introducing the Nostalgia Booth— an interactive booth for giving and receiving unused items. Users can spin the dial to explore items, listening to voice messages and viewing images on the screen. They can also record messages to attach to items in lockers of various sizes—small for jewelry, medium for books, and large for furniture. This innovative booth fosters a sense of connection through shared stories, making the exchange experience both personal and efficient.
MS: IPD Studio
In the Master of Integrated Product Design Studio class, we as individual designers were given a broad prompt to come up with a design solution. We utilized the Double Diamond design process throughout.
Topic Research
We were prompted to think about what Kindness in the City means.
As a class, we gathered and brainstormed related ideas.
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As we formed categorized topics of what Kindness in City could mean, we each converged into a topic and started ideating possible directions to explore. A colleague and I conversed with a few Service Providers in the city, who provide food truck, concierge, ride services to residents of the city to search for ideas.
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Amongst many ideas we explored through the conversation, one idea caught my attention:
"I enjoy giving food/ guidance to people... I feel like receiving something."
The Giving and Receiving and Giving could = Receiving concept, with its relevance to kindness people can exchange in the city, sparked an idea in my mind.
Ideation
I recall my experience as a resident of the city, particularly in apartments that I have lived in my academic career. In the moving in and out process, one need has been prominent: getting/getting rid of items.
Next, I conducted a few interviews to confirm this need. They expressed several key points:
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1. How can I give away something I don't need to someone who needs it?
2. How can I make sure the exchange is safe?
3. How can I make sure the person receiving my item would cherish it?
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With these points in mind, I started ideating by moodboarding, determining the key attributes/emotions, and sketching some possible ideas and a scenario.
First Round Iteration
According to feedback gathered from peers and potential users, I iterated the first round with the following ideas. To fully diverge from my idea, I made 10 sketch models to capture a sense of functionality and look and feel.
Second Round Iteration
From the 10 sketch models, I decided to push more into the "elements of surprise", emphasizing on the feeling of memory, and focusing on specific items people would give away.
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For sketch 1, toys;
For sketch 2, collectibles/jewelries;
For sketch 3, kitchenwares;
For sketch 4 and 5, fabrics.
Low Fidelity and User Testing
To conduct user testings, I set up the Nostalgia Booth at the IPD studio, which mimics an apartment building community: safe and gated, people know each other to a certain extent. I included an iPad screen at the Booth that allowed them access to a Typeform survey, which mimics the digital screen on the device that prompt and instruct the users through recorded voice and texts. Users could also record their voice messages while giving away items. For data collection and easy-prototyping purposes, I separated the testing into Giving and Receiving sessions.
I documented the users' feedback below:
Summarizing the actionable insights, I came up with a few key words:
safety, easy-to-follow flow, ability to see product image, and accessibility.
Hi-fidelity
Per the second round iteration and the actionable insight keywords, I designed a Nostalgia Booth where people can choose to Give or Receive items through the vintage paper-white accessible screen. They can listen and record to the messages in the private barriers, and give or receive items in the lockers of different sizes.
User Flow
Physical Infrastructure
Digital Screen
Giving
Receiving
Mock User Scenario
