Auto opening latch for safely return to work
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused hundreds of thousands of workers to work from home globally. The Product Design class (ME549) at UW-Madison worked with product design consulting company - Delve to deliver product design projects that help workers to return to work safely. I worked with 3 engineering graduate students as a team and was in charge of design research and hardware user experience design.
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Our team delivered the prototype - Jham Latch allows workplaces to implement hands-free opening door latches to existing doors without any change to door frames, decreasing the spread of COVID 19 and other illnesses through commonly touched door handles.
Role
Research, UX Advocate and Design
Duration
3 months
Process
Survey, secondary research, persona, storyboard, user journey, prototyping, and CPT testing
Teammates
Mitchell Mikulsky (Project Manager) Ahmed Hembel (Electrical Engineering)
Joshua Lemiesz (Mechanical Engineering)
How might we...
... help employers and employees implement safer and more effective return to work practices?
Problem Statement
Lots of health and safety measures were implemented for workers to return to the offices during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, people still feel insecure and are not confident that these measures can prevent them from contracting the viruses.
Design Goals
Those in charge of implementing return to work practices need a way to prevent employees from contracting COVID-19 from commonly touched, non-locking, latching door handles in order to make employees feel comfortable within common workplace areas as well as prevent COVID from propagating through the environment.
Discovery
Talking to users
We conducted secondary research, interviewed key stakeholders across different industries, and sent out a survey to gain an understanding of how the companies were dealing with return to work.
Persona & User Journey
After clustering the data, with the help of and mind map, we can easily identify the main needs of our users and sketch out a user journey map with quotes from the interviews. Together, we used persona and user journey throughout our design process to guide design decisions, priorities, and create empathy.
Data Synthesis Takeaways​
1. The survey result indicated companies have been doing a great number of safety measures for employees who have to go back to the office.
2. Common concerns that our interviewees have are the meeting room closed space, interaction, inconvenience due to measures, and if people are sick.
3. The following 4 features are the fundamental elements that earn users' trust.
Design Process
Initial Concepts
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Refined Concepts
We couldn't decide which concepts to move forward as they are all very different. We then agreed on refining the concepts that reflect our core users' needs which is a commonly touched surface - door latch and handle. We walked through the same process of divergent and convergent thinking. Furthermore, we created storyboards for the concept product testing (CPT) with users we interviewed.
We decided to move forward with the Automated Door Latch because it is the most desirable concept, with 95% of participants indicating they are willing to use it every time to enter/exit the door.
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“Good because hands might be occupied, so it's very convenient! The concept could be used after COVID too."
Version 1 Mock-up
Iteration - Jham Latch
The ideation phase included brainstorming, divergent thinking and convergent thinking.
The JHAM Latch provides a touch-free means of opening the door when used in combination with the foot or forearm pull devices. Every time the door is used, the touch prevention counter increases, giving the user a sense of comfort knowing they both prevented themselves from touching a surface that a certain amount of people have touched as well as preventing the spread of the virus to their coworkers.
Intuitive Experience
Design Decision #1
Motion Sensing
The motion sensor icon on the left conveys to the user that the device is motion-activated. The sensor on the front can be triggered by holding your hand in front of the sensor or by standing in front of it.
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Design Decision #2
Showing the progress of opening latch
As the motion is detected, the green light progress bar grows, showing the users visually that their request is known and being completed. This ensures they open the door once the latch is open as well as they know the motion sensor is working.
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Human Factors
Design Decision #1
The collapsible and expandable doorknob design avoids users’ natural behaviors of touching the doorknob.
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The design features an extendable door handle. The handle extends outward when pushed in, and the door latch is manually opened when turned. This encourages using the motion sensor and prevents users from grabbing the doorknob to open the door. Additionally, the knob provides the means to open the door in case of an emergency.
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Traction
Takeaways
It was my first time working on a hardware product design. There were many different things to consider in terms of user experience. I took the lead in design research, and my teammates relied on my expertise in user experience. Working with mechanical and electrical engineers was an exciting experience because they had little background in product design, not to mention the use of design thinking methods in product design.
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Internal communication drove the project! At the beginning of the project, we had a hard time reaching a consensus. Old-school engineers tend to jump to conclusions or directly jump to solutions instead of going through the research and ideation process. Through constant communication and encouragement to think from a UX standpoint, it took me quite some effort to finally be on the same page with them. Speaking their language is easier than asking them to understand your jargon.