A few weeks ago, I applied for a senior product designer role at a particular company. I advanced to the next stage and I was given a design task (Take home assignment) which I believe was to evaluate how I think, my design process, and also my visual design skills.

The design task is shown below:

Role: UX researcher, UI designer

Duration: 7 days

Tools: Figma, Figjam by Figma, Invision Whiteboard, Protopie, Google forms

PROCESS

User research

Due to the limited time, it was important for me to keep research goals and expectations realistic.

Research goals

1. Learn about potential users
2. Close study how the washing machine cycle works

Research Phase

Knowing potential users

Now to where things get interesting, I had phone conversations with 7 washing machine owners between the age of 24–60, most of whom were friends and a single family member. The questions I asked were majorly centred around their thoughts on Smart Washing machines and other smart home appliances and how they track their wash cycle.

Insights

Despite the small sample size, I was able to get some useful information that would subsequently affect my design decisions.

1. Convenience: Users value convenience and want anything to make their laundry process as easy and simple as possible.
2. Familiarity with conventional washing machines: Some people might still be very much used to the traditional washing machines and they think any other solution to the laundry problems they currently face that requires transitioning should be as seamless as possible accompanied by an awesome experience. This was the common thought amongst my older respondees.
3. Pairing and control difficulty: Users claim some current smart home appliances are difficult to pair with mobile devices and are sometimes confusing to and control.

Answers from some respondents

“ Laundry is a chore i dread doing so i will definitely use anything that would make life easier for me.”

“Switching to another style of laundry might be difficult for me if the new system is not a tad bit similar to what i am familiar with”

Normal wash cycle flow process

To also guide my design decisions, I studied the basic cycle flow of most front-load washing machines. and decided to make my process as simple as possible.

Persona

Also based on insights gathered from the research, I was able to define two personas Jack and Roseline shown below:

How might we

To make things easier for me, I set “How might we” questions to help frame design challenges for myself.

Developing a solution

User Flow

After careful ideation, I came up with a user flow using Figjam to show users' paths through the app.

Wireframes

After lots of thinking and ideation, I started the next phase by making sketches and also making digital wireframes using the Invision free online whiteboard.

Deliverables and Solutions

Design system

Started the design process by creating a system with reusable components to help achieve higher efficiency and consistency.

Sparkle! Your smart laundry companion

Introducing Sparkle ❇️, your smart laundry companion. I designed Sparkle to help make the laundry process as easy and simple as possible with users and insights from research in mind which helped me propose some helpful solutions which are listed below :

Smooth onboarding and pairing

I believe a simple and non-time consuming onboarding would help in user retention. During my research, I also discovered users find it difficult to pair their mobile devices with their smart home appliances so I tried to make the pairing process as seamless as possible while still also chasing the goal of making the laundry process as quick and intuitive as possible.

Voice control

Current statistics show that 41% of adults use voice search at least once per day. Studies show that in 2020 more than half of all smartphone users will engage with voice technology on their device. Voice control has proven to make operations and task easier, fast and simple. Users also prefer voice control because it’s faster than typing and can be used hands-free. I thought adding the voice control feature would help bring us another step closer to one of the major goals which is making the laundry process quick and intuitive.

Washing tips

I thought the addition of washing tips before the user starts the wash cycle would help guide users and also show users how to properly set up, load and add detergent to the washing machine. As these procedures can not be performed by Sparkle.

Familiar Cycle knobs

During the research, an interesting insight I discovered was that some users were sceptical about transitioning to smart washing machines because they are a lot more familiar with the conventional washing machine and they think learning to use another system might be time-consuming. To solve this, I thought of leveraging familiarity in this project by making the control knobs similar to physical washing machines. This would also help reduce the learning curve and improve usage speed. I also introduced a progress tracker bar to guide the user and also ease the process as this automatically shows the next step to be taken.

More convenience!

Convenience being a major factor, I decided to make it possible for users to save their cycle settings to be reused easily during subsequent laundry sessions.

Wash wash wash

To help users track the progress of their process I designed a micro animation to make the user interaction engaging and pleasurable.

Push Notifications

Alerts are sent to users through push notifications. this would also help users track their laundry process without getting carried away

You can also test the interactive prototype here.

Final thoughts:

I’m quite pleased with the result, as working on a project like this wasn’t easy due to time limits and other factors. I also believe there are other directions on which I may explore with more time, some of which are stated below:

• Test flow with real users and iterate based on feedback
• Add and design user profiles
• Spend more time researching on various technology to also make the process and flow as seamless as possible

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