The project Design for Specific Users allowed the students to experience the design process learned up until this point, applied to a real-life situation. Through the co-design experience, the team learned how to communicate and design in relation to the case owner, and to deal with the unpredictability related to such situations. Naturally, there is alwasy room for improvement. This section shall discuss various aspects which worked well, which did not work well as well as the key takeaway from participatng in this project.

 

Working with a Participant

The team and the participant interacted well, allowing a professional and comfortable environment to be maintained throughout. the process. Working with the participant allowed the team to learn the realities of applied design and working with real people. It was learnt that not everything will go as planned, possibly for many reasons. One of which that was experienced was delayed communication between the group and the participant. This was primarily because of the participant's busy schedule and the fact that all communication happened via email.

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Prototype 

During the product phase of the prototype, the team remained motivated and organised to complete it on time. The team was also able to learn new skills regarding sewing and textiles. The final mid-fidelity prototype mimics the functions of the final design as well as the overall look, however some materials and fastening systems are still very basic or not a resemblance of the final. This was due to teh financial capabilities of the group and the fact that some industrial-level materials commonly used in backpacks were not available to the group. For future improvement, it would be nice to prototype with more suitable materials and try to improve the shape of the bags. This can probably done with an additional layer of interfacing within the sides of the bags.

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Testing 

Testing did not go as planned due to unavailability of the participant. However, this did not necessarily affect the project negatively, but instead taught the team how to solve the problem in a relatively short time. As a matter of fact, the situation was solved by making a video and a survey and sending it to the user. Even though the user could not physically test it, this worked out as the best solution. 

 

The Team

Positive: Throughout the project, the team communicated effectively and regualr meetings were organised to stay up to date. Each member made an effort to contribute the assignmnet and come up with a broad variety of ideas. The group, however, could have has a better delegation of tasks to spread the workload and the later stages of the project could have been planned better to more efficiently construct the prototype. Furthermore, the final conceot could have been decided earlier to allow the group to focus more on the later stages.​

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Conclusion

This project provided the team a good example on how people don't necessarily need a negative problem as a prompt to design, but inspiration could also come from simply enhancing positive feelings in order to further improve life. 

The team managed, thanks to the help of the participant, to develop a modular bag, suitable for the mother and the experience of returning back to work. The design challenge was met, with the added value of capturing the evolving essence of maternity. 

Further values were developed towards the topic of adaptability not only towards the assigned case owner, but to other people as well. This was not only a wish of the participant to help other mothers in the same situation, but also to show the team’s capability of creating a design easily interchangeable and adaptable to each personal needs. 

 

Looking back, the team realized that the whole process should  have started earlier in order not to rush the final days with final steps of the project. 

 

On the other hand, by looking at the future, it would be a good investment of time organizing the prototyping phase earlier in order to leave the team enough time with the testing, so that the prototype could be iterated and improved based on the feedback from the user.