Light Up Focus Plant— Evertree

Integrative Product Development

Jan - May 2021

Overview

Me and an interdisciplinary team of 4 developed Evertree—a hand crafted study tool that helps users reimagine guided productivity sessions as the tree lights up over time according to focus duration.
This project was inspired by a class prompt on how we might increase productivity during the pandemic. Our team presented our product at a trade show and were awarded $5k for this project to continue development!

January 2021- May 2021
UX & Product Designer
5 members

Duration
My Role
Team

Design Objective

Our team wanted to provide users with a product that motivates them to stay focused and off their smartphones during their work sessions and breaks in a delightful way, saving them time and energy while mitigating the anxiety associated with incomplete tasks and lack of structured work time

Our Process:

  • Market Research

  • Surveys

  • Sketching

  • User Interviews

  • Low fidelity physical prototyping

  • Low fidelity web app mockups

  • User testing

  • CAD 3D prototyping

  • High fidelity CAD and Web Application

Product Features

  • Concealed Wireless Charging Phone Dock: Fitted with an invisible wireless charging pad and non-slip surface that detects phone placement to activate focus period

  • Guided Break Prompting: Inlaid timer displays elapsed focus time duration and gentle vibration prompts for optimally-timed breaks

  • Mobile application allows user to control timer settings, and track high level progress

The back of the base is a wireless charging phone slot

Initial Ideation

Here’s a look at our crazy Miro board with all our processes, iteration and brainstorming

What do Users Care about?

We conducted user interviews early on to learn about what our users cared about the most. These were our major findings on what users expressed most strongly.

I illustrated a storyboard to help the team visualize how our product might be used

After multiple rounds of ideations and idea generation and getting feedback from our peers, we eventually diverged and converged into this focus plant idea. We created sketches and low fidelity prototypes during the development process, experimenting with the shape and design of the tree.

After iterating on these low fidelity prototypes, we moved to CAD and created an initial plastic 3D print of the base structure. We ordered components from Amazon consisting of led fairy lights (we initially tried using programmable led lights but they were much too bulky to use), a wireless charging coil, a digital clock (that we took apart to use just the display) and a vibration motor. We tried finding cheaper components and following that scrappy mindset, we sourced the moss from one of our teammate’s pants, and collected pebbles outside.

Through this process, I had been iterating on the mobile experience to tie into thus product. Check out the app prototype here!

Here’s a demo video pitching the use case of our product!

Takeaways

Throughout this whole process, we struggled with actually coming up with the product concept. In the beginning stages, we had multiple product ideas we wanted to try out— from a digitally integrated charcuterie/cutting board to a one-a-day magnetic puzzle board—we were lost as to where we should focus on.

Secondly, we had a hard time narrowing down exactly what features and functions we wanted our product to have. Did we want it to play music? What kind of a phone dock would work best? What material would the tree and lights be made of? How would we theoretically manufacture these elements and what would be most realistic?

Lastly, we ran into feasibility constraints into the later stages of costing our product and thinking about manufacturing constraints—We had a lot of features and components we wanted to include which drove our final pricing up. In our final prototype, we hand cut and twisted individual copper wires together to craft the tree. We had considered the process of automating this but ultimately decided it would have to be hand twisted, leading to higher labor costs (Our final product ended up being marked at $95.00 with a total unit cost as $42.61, giving us a margin of $52.39).

What helped our team move forward with indecision or challenges was going back to our research and rooting our decisions in data that was backed up by our prior findings. We also consulted a lot in our peers and instructors and their expertise helped to guide us as well.

Quick Links:

Medium article on the production/process of this project: https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/product-development-during-the-covid-pandemic-light-up-focus-tree-14a55bc7b14

Website for this product & its features:
https://hanqing8.wixsite.com/evertree