Holebrain - Redesigning Covid Safety Barriers

Product Design

How might we have effective verbal communication across a non-permeable, largely transparent barrier?

ROLE

I designed and led user interviews, survey analysis, brainstorming sessions, and video production. I was the only person on the team with a liberal arts background in design and communication.

SCOPE

7 weeks

PROBLEM

"[The Barrier] is
f-ing ridiculous"

Both customers and employees can be frequently seen poking their heads around the plexiglass, crouching down, or shouting to communicate - putting each other in danger of spreading the coronavirus, because the currently implemented plexiglass barriers do not allow sound to travel through very easily, especially in already noisy environments

RESEARCH

We talked to and watched 10+ people to understand their needs and created the fact-based personas.

BENCHMARKING

We defined product requirements using secondary research organized by alternative matrix

From the alternative matrix below, we created our product requirements as increased decibels of audio, clarity, durability, visibility, intuitive, affordable, and cleanable.

PROTOTYPING

3 rounds of prototyping

Round 1

Holding a 5 minute brainstorming [come back to this and find the term!] session

Round 2

Picking 4 promising ideas for high-fi sketching ("phone string", non-verbal, holes covered by different materials, cardioid)

Round 3

Building out the barriers for testing

TESTING

Using user and performance testing to identify the "MVP" barrier

User testing at the student center

We used role-play to understand which design is most visible and intuitive to use. We provided each user with a Chipotle menu and asked them to order a meal with the employee (one of the team members) that was seated across on the other side of the barrier mockups and recorded their interactions.

Decibel & Hey Siri tests

We used two performance tests to understand which mockup is the most efficient functionally. For a holistic review of whether or not there is an actual improvement for the conversation experience through a barrier, we used the Siri voice command to test for clarity.

OUTCOME

Meeting design specs

The testings showed that our product was almost completely on-spec. Given that we chose to use colored cellophane sheets, the color tint slightly reduces visibility compared to a transparent sheet. However, the sheet is still translucent and the user can still view through other areas of the barrier with full visibility. Therefore, the slightly reduced visibility isn't an issue.

REFLECTION

What would I have done differently?

Practicing more prototyping skills. I've asked my teammates to be actively involved in the building process but the time constraint required us to move quickly so we were mostly playing to our strength at homestretch.
Conducting more user testing with a more diverse sample. We were in contact to conduct testing at a retirement housing to see how our design works with HoH users. Due to time constraint and Covid concerns, we didn't end up carrying out the test.
Keeping a better documentation throughout the process. [add description]

RESULTS

Downloadable Reports

If you want to read the complete report to learn more about the project and the opportunity assessment process, please click on the links below :)

Final Product Report

Opportunity Assessment