Midea Design Sprint
I had the pleasure in participating in a multidisciplinary collaboration for Midea to create innovative dishwasher designs for the United States market.
During this five week design sprint, I worked closely with Sierra Chisenhall and Ananya Daga to create an innovative experience design suitable for our audience. We were tasked with designing for a group of college roommates living in a shared space. This group also shares utilities. After conducting in-depth research and interviews, we created our persona named Kyle Fletcher, a 22 year old full-time college student.
Kyle and his roommates, aged 19-23, living in a shared space.
Our final design consists of a dynamic, rotating handle with a user-friendly touch screen and a mobile app that connects to Kyle’s smart home lighting fixtures. The handle became smaller than most typical dishwasher handles and allowed for one-handed, rotational access. Our compact design allowed Kyle and his roommates to save space in their kitchen while engaging with an interface similar to that of a smartphone. Our mobile app allowed the group to check their dishwasher’s status, adjust dishwasher and smart light settings, and send reminders to each roommate to ensure cleanliness of the shared space.
Midea mobile app and handle interface were primarily designed by myself and Sierra Chisenhall. Physical handle design and high quality renders were created by Ananya Daga.
We began our process by conducting research and user interviews. We formulated a series of questions to further explore how our audience interacted with their dishwashers and technology in general. Our answers helped us dive deeper into roommate values and determine how those could be represented through smart technology.
Each of us then created a variety of interface sketches, each focusing on a pair of opposite-based designs. Sketching with opposites in mind allowed us to gain a variety of perspectives on how our users might interact with each part of the interface.We formulated two unique concepts: A sliding screen interface for saving space, and a mobile app-based interface that allowed our audience to check their dishwasher status on the go.
We refined our second concept and focused on usability from a mobile perspective. Our audience is frequently on the go, so we created a mobile app that allowed for easy access and roommate communication. From this app, users can send roommate reminders, check dishwasher status, and enable or disable their smart home light timers. This became a crucial part of our design, as smart lighting was able to change color when the wash cycle was completed.