Rachel Hungerford

rhunger@uw.edu | contact | resume

HCI Project: Envisioning the Future of Mobile Interaction 2020



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CHALLENGE
Design a mobile device for the year 2020 to be used by farmer's market organizers in Seattle to help address their current needs. This project was created as the final assignment for IMT 540: HCI Design Methods.
MY ROLE
User researcher, interaction designer
PROCESS
  • Identify users' unmet needs
    • Interview farmer's market organizers
    • Conduct contextual inquiry both at the markets and in the office
  • Locate the users' most problematic concerns
    • Affinity diagram observations
    • Structured brainstorming
    • Creation of personas and scenarios
    • Target one problem to focus on
  • Ideate solutions for the chosen problem: data dissemination
  • Iterative Prototyping and testing
    1. Created paper prototypes
    2. Conducted usability testing on the paper prototypes
    3. Fixed usability issues
    4. Created an interactive prototype using Powerpoint and a clay model of the product
RESULT

Our design solution is the Personal Information Management Pen. The pen functions as fully functional computer that activates when used with a monitor, which, in the case of the farmer's market organizers, is a clipboard.

DESIGN RATIONALE

We discovered through observation that farmer's market organizers were carrying cumbersome filing cabinets from their offices to the markets in order to collect data from the farmers (sales information, etc.). Our design allows the organizers to work with both technically savvy and non-savvy farmers. The pen can collect data as it is processed from the markets and can also be used to manually collect data from less technically savvy farmers who are unable to directly interact with the P.I.M.P. themselves due to unfamiliarity with technology. The design also allows organizers to interact with the farmers and collect data about scheduling, farmer's needs, etc.

Group Members: Nick Sweers, Eric Bell, Grace Chang, Mike Hogsett