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Overview
Echo Gourmet is an exploratory project into how a tech giant like Amazon could leverage their large network of services and hardware expertise to create a new class of educational voice assistant.
My partner, Dustin Chan and I developed this concept as part of our capstone project at DAAP. The project was split into four distinct phases; research, ID concepting, user validation, and concept app development. You can check out the app development here.
Maximizing human touchpoints by conducting interviews, surveys, attending cooking classes, and even running guided cooking made this a delightful project to work on. All content by me unless noted.
Role
ID & Interaction Designer
Teammates
Dustin Chan
Duration
Spring 2018
Deliverables
System Concept, User Experience Outline, &
Looks-like Model
**Note
Some research content is designed for desktop viewing.
The Problem
In the US people often order in or go out to eat instead of cooking at home and learning to cook can be a challenge. How might we add value to voice-based home assistants by creating a framework for an educational experience based around cooking?
41%
of people age 18-34 ate dinner out two or more times in the past week.
19.7%
of US adults own and use a smart speaker at home.
Research
Techniques
During the project a wide variety of research techniques were employed to help understand users, test ideas, and gather feedback to create the most complete solution in the amount of time we had.
Inquiry Research
When starting a project diving into current trends and interesting topics that relate to the technology being leveraged helps me to gain a base level insight. Reading articles and writing down our thoughts allowed us to easily pick out current trends and use them to create actionable design goals.
Read to Learn
Market Research
User Groups
Project Goals
Read to Learn
Market Research
User Groups
Project Goals
Ecosystem Immersion
One of the best ways to understand users is to put yourself in their shoes. In our efforts to better understand how our potential users think and act we participated in a few immersive activities including; using Amazon meal kits, taking part in novice cooking classes, and purchasing an Amazon Echo.
Christine, my wonderful Hipcook instructor
Using an Amazon Meal Kit
Online Survey
To help answer our questions and help create a better idea of who our stakeholders were and what they needed; we created two surveys. One survey dealt with perception of AI and home assistants, while the other dealt with how people deal with shopping, eating out, and preparing food.
AI Perception
Shopping & Home Prep
Survey Analysis
AI Perception
Shopping & Home Prep
Survey Analysis
Design Intent
Initial research lead us to create a system of physical and digital artifacts that focus on a few specific design goals.
1.) Create a system that is responsible. Make sure the final product is simple and enhances a users life.
2.) Design the physical product to act as proper kitchen artifact. It should look and feel at home in the kitchen.
3.) Use the product as a way to experiment with extending current user experience flows.
Feature
Brainstorm
Initial feature brainstorming is a great way to think of not only much needed design decisions, but also a way to cover corner cases. It is also the time to let the ideas “get crazy” and be a little weird or off the wall. We decided to experiment with some lo-fi model making to show how the different ideas might work in a kitchen.
Feature Brainstorm & What-Ifs
Concept
Development
Developing the Amazon Gourmet hardware concept started with us focusing on creating a single device to replace or upgrade the current Amazon Echo line of voice assistants. Later on, the concept would develop to act as more of a system including a base unit, sensors, and charging hub.
Initial Sketch Dump
Evolving Amazon’s
Design Language
In early 2018, Amazon’s products mostly consisted of black plastic basic shapes. The Echo itself was a tall, black, imposing tower. Our goal was to evolve the design language to using more textural elements, more organic basic shapes, and switch to using materials more suited to the kitchen.
Product Material & Form Inspiration
Initial Models with block internals
Revised System Concept
Concept
Refinement
We felt Focusing on Amazon’s unique light-based UX was important. This lead us to mimic the original cylinder shape. In an effort to make the monolithic cylinder feel more organic, we decided on a shape we called the “carafe”. The sensors were developed as a separate sprint and then later refined to mirror the design language of the base unit.
Carafe Refinement
Starting with with a basic cylinder we went through a few rounds of form development that ended with a complex blended form. The rounded square dish at the top acts as a tactile touchpoint, while the curved aluminum body lends a style that looks great in the kitchen and is easy to clean as well.
"Soft Cylinder" Exploration
3D Proportion Refinement
3D Prints
CMF Study
Final Carafe Design
"Soft Cylinder" Exploration
3D Proportion Refinement
3D Prints
CMF Study
Final Carafe Design
Sensor Refinement
We started the sensor design by focusing on usability and wall placement. After nailing down the base unit form language we redesigned the shell of the sensor to match.
Initial sensor concepts
Selected Concept
Form Development
Detail Refinement
Final Sensor design
Initial sensor concepts
Selected Concept
Form Development
Detail Refinement
Final Sensor design
Charging Dock
& Mounting Plate
Because the sensors were designed to be as small as possible, a charging solution was needed. A system comprising of a magnetic charging dock and wall mounted sensor baseplate makes it easy to place sensors wherever you might need one.
Wall Mount Development
Final Wall Mount Design
Charging Dock Concept
Charging Dock Development
Final Charging Dock
Wall Mount Development
Final Wall Mount Design
Charging Dock Concept
Charging Dock Development
Final Charging Dock
User
Experience
Creating the physical artifacts was only the first part of the design process. How a user might interact with the system and how the system relays information were important pieces of the puzzle. Using prototyping hardware and validation sessions we designed an exploratory framework that extends Amazon’s current Echo user experience.
Validation
Session 1
One of the best features of the Echo is the light ring. It allows users to immediately identify what mode the unit is in, whether there is a notification, or what may be wrong with the unit. We decided to extend these and created a sample set of our own interactions.
Light Ring
Interactions
One of the best features of the Echo is the light ring. It allows users to immediately identify what mode the unit is in, whether there is a notification, or what may be wrong with the unit. We decided to extend these and created a sample set of our own interactions.
Light Ring UX
Validation
Session 2
About a month after our first session we were ready for another. The goal of the second session was to validate the interactions we had been developing. We used an Arduino development board and a 3D printed model to help us test our new interactions.
We were looking to test a more technique driven learning model using explanations of proper preparation and more reliance on video tutorials. We also included an intro to each recipe to provide each participant with a list of ingredients and an overview of the steps required to reach the end product.
Arduino Setup for Light Ring Testing
Final
Thoughts
Designing this concept and testing it with people made me appreciate the complexity of devices of this nature. I believe that a lot more testing of both visual and sound based UX would be what I would have explored next, given more time.
The final family of form and design language we created holds up to modern trends and doesn't look out of place at all. It was interesting over the last year to see the updates made to various Amazon and Google products as they launched features similar to what we were prototyping.
As far as reflection 2018-2019 seems to be the year of the large screen though and most of the new devices, like the Facebook portal, feature a large screen instead of just a standalone device. This was interesting as we thought that devices might rely on the connection to people's existing mobile devices and tablets to expand service integration and help lower costs of devices overall.
