Welcome to Bedroom -A case study by Saiteja Kudligi
Once upon a time… There lives a guy called Saiteja Kudligi, A UI designer based in Anantapur. He’s curated to learn UX Design. He started searching for courses, days are passing like hours.. Hours like seconds, but he didn’t find any!
One fine day while he’s scrolling Insta, he found a UX Kickstarter workshop by Growth School. There starts his UX design journey!
Present
As the part of UX mastery course, Week-1 assignment, he got a topic of UX Case Study on Bedroom.
Let’s hear what exactly it is, in the words of Saiteja.
Hi everyone, This is Saiteja. We are a batch of 10. Each person was given one room of a house to focus on, and we were asked to consider other members of our group as users.
I hit the jackpot, I got a bedroom as my topic for designing thinking exercise. Let’s dive deep into design thinking.
What Exactly Design Thinking is?
Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, user’s problems, pain points, defining the problem statements, Ideating the brainstorming for the reasons, Prototyping the final solution, and testing the prototype with the user. After getting inputs from the users, the entire cycle repeats !
Now you got a rough idea of what I’m trying to say right !
Cmon’ Sherlocks, let’s find the mystery of Bedroom.
Empathize :
Okay, Let’s start with the basic definition of a Bedroom.
Bedroom ( noun )
/ˈbɛdruːm,ˈbɛdrʊm/
- The only place on the earth, where you can feel comfortable in your skin
- A place where we can truly be ourselves.
Disclaimer : These definitions are not to be used for commercial purposes. Saiteja Kudligi has sole rights to these definitions.
I’ve conducted user research in this stage. I’ve connected with five of my group members and conducted user interviews, which lasted for 1 – 2 hours each. and found some really interesting points.
They took our Bedroom mystery to next level.
My questions are :
1. Are you having proper sleep in the bedroom or not? If not, why? Any specific issues stating why you’re not getting Proper sleep ? Is it okay for you to replace your bed if it is necessary ?
2. Did you ever feel difficulty in storing things in your bedroom ? If so, Can you explain it briefly ?
3 Is your bedroom simple or messy? If messy, is it because of less space or with items that occupy more space ? Are you facing any difficulty in arranging things in an efficient way ?
4. Are there any previous experiences where you had felt having a separate space to study would be a great add-on ?
5. Do you need your bedroom to be Luxurious or minimalist ?
6. Have you ever felt like having a specific theme in your bedroom ? Can you share why you had that feeling ? And how you wanted that to be ?
7. Are you a green lover ? (If, so then) We generally watch a few people growing plants in their bedroom right, Have you ever felt like having one too ?
8. Is ventilation good in your bedroom ? If not, are you facing any issues regarding ventilation ? Do you ever feel like customising it ?
9. Are there any specifications that you wanted to be in your future bedroom ?
10. Any issues like Internet connectivity, AC Outlet issues
It’s quite awesome interaction with them. Our next step is the Define Stage
Define
This is the stage at which we typically would frame problem statements basis what we have observed from the Empathise stage.
DEFINE and write ALL the problems that could be solved for all the users, that we have interviewed. We have to write it from the users’ perspective 📝
The define stage helps us to decide on who we want to design for and what we want to help them do or achieve!
Storage issues.
Difficulty in arranging things.
AC water outlet issue.
Wifi issue
Cleaning under a bed is a difficult task
Difficulty in proper arrangement of things in cupboards
Placing things like mobile, keys, and spets beside the bed.
Don’t want bedroom to be attached to the hall.
Want privacy in the bedroom
Major issue — Storage
Plug points — Charging
Wiring issues, Want to make them look nice.
Why these problems are important to users?
Storage issues — I want to take this as a priority one, because if we store things properly, then half of the bedroom problems will be resolved.
Because there are many problems that are connected to this storage issue.
Arrangement Issue: I wanted to take this as a second priority one because if we are unable to arrange things properly, the headache starts there. It even makes us HULK if we don’t find what we want.
Ventilation issue: Many people are feeling this as a major issue because they wanted the room to be dark @ nights and bright in the mornings. Two of my interviewees wants the morning sun to wake them up
Cleaning under bed issue. This is the place where we can find cities and towns (heaps of trash) 😅
Wiring issue — Many people find hiding wires as a herculean task. It changes the entire look and feel of the bedroom
Ideate
Storage issue :
There are two solutions to this issue if we use cots effectively :
- Managing our under cot space effectively.
- Replacing old cots with the new cots which have racks in-built (As the majority of users willing to buy new cot)
Arrangement issue :
Making more number of partitions in our racks.
Labelling and prioritising things can solve this issue.
Organizing Things :
At the same time, people want to hide wiring stuff.
Why hide things, when we can change them to look beautiful.
Ventilation issue :
For ventilation issues, I suggest using automatic curtain openers. It can open or close curtains either by pre-fixed time or we can even operate them using mobile devices.
For those who can’t operate it, they can use fixed time, rest can operate them using their mobile devices.
Prototype Stage
This is the stage where we actually make a representational model of the solution we came up with. Then we have to send it to our end users and get their feedback and further refine and iterate on them.
How I solved this Bedroom mystery
- Managing our under cot space effectively.
Effective use of under cot space
That’s it?
No, I wanted to solve the Arranging issue as well with this same solution.
Labelling and prioritising things can solve this issue.
How Labeling helps in solving an arrangement issue
This simple technique can also make cleaning under-bed stuff easy!
How?
Trash piles up only if we don’t use that space for any purpose. But here we use this space regularly for storing things. So if you want to clean Under-bed stuff, we can just pull them out and clean the dirt and then replace them in their position!
Testing Stage
By this stage, we come to a point where we would test the prototype we have built. We have to conduct user testing by sharing our prototype with users and get feedback from them. We wouldn’t completely know if your solution worked or not until we show that final prototype to users.
Because solving the problem is just not enough. It is important that it works!
Here’s what I found!
⭐⭐⭐⭐
It's an efficient use of space. Can use it for things that we don’t need frequently ☺
-Nishi
.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Good solution, but I don’t have much space under my cot to place this organizer. the cot is very low. In that case, cleaning is again a concern.
-Suma
.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Studied your prototype teja, it’s nice and neat.
-Sriya Nallan
.
It’s Good and effective
-Nil
.
Iteration -2
To all users who have their bed very low and unable to clean their under-bed stuff, I have a simple solution for you!
Cleaning under bed Issues:
We can increase the height of the bed by placing cot holders below the legs of a cot. Then it gives enough space for our hand to clean them effectively.
Yeah, I know, I know you might be bored by reading all the way long!
My learnings
User experience is not just about designing screens for Mobile or desktop. It’s much more than that. It deals with interacting with people, empathising, brainstorming, ideating, prototyping and user testing. UI is juss a part of UX design! User experience is something like solving user problems and making their life more easier by giving them awesome experience while using the product!
Finally, It’s time to celebrate !!!
-Saiteja Kudligi
Why?
Because I’ve completed my first UX case study and you’ve completed reading it 😜
( Spoiler alert: I’ve also wrote case studies earlier, but this is different. In this I’ve followed each and every step clearly 😛)
