Enhancing the user experience of Home office/Study while working on bed

“Case Study: A solution for a mess created while working on bed”

Nowadays working from home or studying from home is a new way of living, it have its own pros and cons.
If you have ever worked from home you might have faced an issue of mess, specially while working on bed or there might be situation where you cannot take your laptop, keyboard and stuff to bed as it’ll be a mess after some time, you’ve to clean up whole table and clear all the items from bed and many more issues.

Well I found a solution to this problem after working on Design Thinking project for 2 months, before that lets dig deep into the design thinking which led me to this Product.

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that emphasizes empathy, creativity, and iterative prototyping. It involves a five-step process:

Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
In the empathize phase, designers deeply understand user needs and challenges.
The define phase involves synthesizing insights to clearly define the problem statement.
Ideation encourages diverse and innovative thinking to generate potential solutions.
Prototyping allows designers to quickly create tangible representations of ideas.
Finally, testing involves gathering feedback from users and refining the prototypes.
Design thinking promotes a human-centered approach, encouraging designers to iterate and refine their solutions based on user feedback.

And with all that we also need to keep one most Important thing in mind while following all these steps

Its Bias in all these Steps
We have to keep it our mind while working on Design thinking if we are Bias or not.

Now What is Bias?

In UX design, bias refers to the preconceived notions, assumptions, or preferences that designers may bring into the design process, which can influence the way they perceive, understand, and interpret user needs and behaviors. These biases can lead to design decisions that may not accurately reflect the actual needs, goals, and preferences of the users.

After so much discussion I got my space area as Bedroom

Started with User Interviews

User interviews

II took 5 User interviews and noted all the details users were saying.
After taking the interviews its time to find out the problems from the details I’ve written while user interviews.

Here are some common Problems I found in user interviews

There is not enough Space other than bed in bedroom

Finds it difficult to work on bed

No privacy

Ventilation is not good enough

Finds problem after streaming online, the bed gets all messy with food and stuff

Light exposure

and many more….

So the Problem Statement to my Case study is:

User gets frustrated while placing all office items on and out from the bed while working.

I found 29 problems and now its time to find root problem from surface level problems I found out.

Now what is Root Problem?

Finding the root problem in the design process involves identifying and understanding the fundamental issue that needs to be addressed. It requires thorough analysis and exploration to uncover the underlying cause, enabling the development of effective solutions.

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It led to Some of the Problems altogether

User finds is difficult to place all the items on bed while working and again moving it out of the bed after work.

Users gets frustrated while eating snacks or food on bed as it may fall and the mattress might get dirty.

user finds it difficult to stream something while eating on bed, as user have to hold phone or tablet.

User finds it difficult to use portable bed table as it may fall after sudden movement and all the Imp. might fall.

Person holding the tab and eating with other hand on te bed

The crazy 8 technique Helped me in getting to final product

Crazy 8 is a brainstorming technique where we’ve have 8 minutes to generate as many ideas as possible, encouraging rapid ideation and fostering creative thinking in a time-constrained setting.

After doing Crazy 8 I landed to major solution which I found most useful for the user

Product Details:

Office table permanently attached to wall, that can be moved back even when there are office items on it.

Added Legs( extendable legs) to give it more support on bed if there are heavy elements.

Added small sliding wooden plank to keep all extra eatables or any light weight thing, which prevents bed from mess.

Added little depth to table to prevent anything from falling.

Table on bed attached with wall

these were the rough sketches I did for usability testing

Then got some ideas from Usability testing and Iterated on the final Product

I took some examples from Research too

1. The Table legs were not good enough for leg spacing.
2. There should be something to hold Cup or liquid item.
3. There should be some depth to sliding wooden plank so anything doesn't fall out( it was quite challenging and it have only spacing for wooden plank).
4. There should be some pen or phone stand so that its doesn't get messy on the table.
5. There should be lock system to rod attached to wall and table to lock the position.

Here are some examples I got from online and offline research( one of them I got while Cleaning my House)

And with all that I got my Final Product

Table Top, Final Product

Table rod

Table Back

Sliding wooden base

Table top with reference to Bed

My Learnings from this Design Thinking Project are

1. Human-centered focus: Design thinking emphasizes understanding and empathizing with users, leading to more effective solutions.
2. Iterative approach: It showcases the value of iterative prototyping and testing, allowing for continuous improvement based on user feedback.
3. Collaborative mindset: It encourages multidisciplinary collaboration, fostering diverse perspectives and promoting innovative solutions.
4. Embracing ambiguity: It demonstrates the importance of embracing ambiguity and reframing problems, leading to more creative problem-solving.
5. Bias towards action: It emphasizes taking action and learning from real-world experiences, rather than relying solely on analysis and speculation.
6. Importance of empathy: It highlights the power of empathy in uncovering deep user insights and designing meaningful solutions.
7. Embracing failure: Design thinking encourages a mindset that sees failure as an opportunity for learning and growth, promoting resilience and experimentation.
8. Systems thinking: It demonstrates the value of considering the broader system and its impact on the problem, leading to holistic and impactful solutions.

Please let me know your thoughts on this story by clapping or leaving a comment with suggestions.

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Thank You!