Balcony Extender: A transparent Automatic Extender to cover your balcony in rain and snow
Hello Everyone reading,
This article is from the standpoint of a beginner design thinker and about my learning and unlearning while solving a problem.
In this project, we were given a problem area and we need to understand and solve that problem area. At first, there was a session with my mentor Anudeep Ayyagari, where he explained the things that are there in this project. Upon asking he also gave some tips on framing questions and doing user interviews. Some of which were:
Understand the real problem.
Identify the core of the problem.
Chasing the wrong problem doesn’t give you the best solution.
Ask questions to get into the core of the problem to find the right problem.
He then also told us that you will only learn these things when you do a mistake and when you realize your mistakes.
Summary
Choosing the Problem
The project is about making the Experience of people better in a part of their home. I had about 8 options to choose from which were:
Balcony
Parking
Terrace
Living room
Home office
Dining area
Kitchen
Bedroom
Bathroom
Storage areas
Utility area
I choose the Balcony area cause I didn’t really use the balcony area much and I thought that I can have great learning when choosing this area. And I will be able to understand users’ experiences better as I will have very less biases about the area.
1. Understanding the User Problems (Empathize)
I was very excited about discussing with users about their experiences on their balconies. So It was time for preparing questions before the discussion. So having no idea of how to prepare questions and how to do the discussions I hopped on various calls with seniors and got some tips on how to frame and ask the questions. Some of the suggestions which were given by seniors were like:
- Focus on having a conversation don't just focus on asking questions.
- First, introduce yourself and tell them about your objective it will open up the conversation.
- Make the conversations natural and free-flowing and don’t be desperate in getting to the problems of the user.
- Have questions as your guide points.
- Do the interviews and learn from them and change the questions accordingly as you feel necessary.
Then I made a basic set of questions as guide points according to my understanding which was:
1. Rent or own house?
2. Society flat or own building?
3. Balcony or Veranda?
4. Who all uses the balcony?
5. Space on the balcony?
6. What kind of railing is on the balcony?
7. Clothes Dry?
8. Jhula?
9. Water stagnation in rains?
10. Dustbin?
11. Extra Items stored on the balcony?
12. Cooler?
13. Ac outlet?
14. Is it peaceful?
15. Power socket?
16. Reasons why I spend time on the balcony?
17. Last time when did you use the balcony? Brief?
I then did my first discussion, and it felt that the discussion went very well. It was all conversational in nature and it also went for a very long time, around one and half hours. But little did I know how many mistakes I had made.
Then there was the second discussion where I tried to get into detail about the person and the house first before coming to the balcony. I tried knowing the location of the balcony in the house. The rest of the discussion followed up with similar kinds of questions.
Then in the third interview, I added up a few questions which I learned while discussing with the first two people:
18. Assume I am Ginnie and I am gonna give you the best balcony. What kind of balcony will you like to have?
19. What all things have you done at an event like Diwali?
20. Tell me about your Interactions on the balcony during a certain event?
Then in the third discussion, I tried to discuss the past event of the person and tried to gather insight in that manner. The fourth and fifth interviews also went in the same manner. In my 5th discussion, I got some very good advice from my group mate about going into depth about the problem by asking the why.
Then there was a doubt session with Anudeep where I got to know about the mistakes I was making which were:
I was asking a lot of leading questions like: Is it peaceful, Do you have a problem with the cooler, or AC duct?
I was also asking users about problems that I had on my balcony
I was also putting the person in hypothetical situations which also lead to hypothetical problems.
Not asking questions in depth.
2. Figuring Out User Problems (Define)
I defined nearly about 25 problems from all the discussions. And in discussing with my group members I found out that I was defining my problems in the wrong way, what I was doing was defining very long problems describing various reasons why it is important to the user, but making the reasoning separate will make the problems to the point and will be easier to identify the base problem.
Then I elaborated the reason for each problem separately which I could refer to if I need the user context of the problem. The Problems and Reasons are as follows:
Learnings which I had in defining while talking to my group members and in doubt sessions with Anudeep are as follows:
Don’t define a problem with a solution in mind it’s like saying you went to the doctor and said you did not take the Paracetamol another example which is the person does not have a Broom on the balcony.
If I think that not having something is a problem then go deeper and ask why the person has this problem and get to the root of the problem.
Writing why is it important for the user is very crucial as it will help in setting the context regarding the problem and it will help in better understanding of the problem.
Don’t give generic reasons for the problems otherwise in the ideation stage the ideas will also be generic.
3. Ideating Solutions for the Problems (Ideate)
Now here I come to a stage where let the brain loose and generate some crazy ideas. I tried doing solutioning only now after I understand what the problems really are. That is why it was important to not jump to solutions until now.
I used a technique called crazy 8: For every problem, I identified in the previous step, I must come up with 8 ideas in around 16 minutes. I did this to time-bound myself and not get stuck thinking about a particular problem only.
I also took help from my group members whenever I felt stuck with a problem & was not able to generate many ideas for a problem. The ideas which I got are as follows:
If you haven’t been tired of going through this long list of ideas that nearly contained 150 ideas. Then let's proceed further where I short-listed some ideas as my top pics:
- A roller with a water Jet attached and a brush attached in front can be used for cleaning faster.
- Rubber gasket which can be inserted between the doors.
- Big sticker of which one part is cloth fiber and another part is sticky which can be used to paste it on the sliding door.
- Keeping dummy Snakes and owls in the rods to scare away the pigeons.
- Smoke/vapor system to scare away the pigeons.
- Fake Ivy curtains to increase privacy.
- Arduino automatic watering system.
- Emoji sticker tape.
- Decorated plant pots, plants with decorative lighting that can glow at night.
- Transparent balcony ceiling extender.
- Raincoat cover for the items on the balcony.
- Waterproof compartment for keeping extra items on the balcony.
- A rod heater connected to the ceiling will heat up the whole balcony area
Then filtering through these I came up with my top 3:
- Balcony rain cover extender so that the water does not come into the balcony.
I choose this cause: During rain, rain causes a lot of problems on the balcony making it dirty and non-accessible. This is a problem which I think a large number of people will be facing. - Arduino Watering system
I choose this cause: Many people are busy and are not able to water their plants properly so this system will help them in watering their plants - Waterproof compartment.
Many people keep extra stuff on the balcony but things get wet in the rainy season. To prevent this a waterproof compartment will be a perfect fit.
Drum rolls please, for the final Idea
drrrrrrrrr…………………..uuuuuuum….…………………………dish dish
And the final idea is a transparent balcony rain cover extender. The reason for choosing this idea was that it was able to solve two main problems in monsoon which are balconies becoming inaccessible due to rain coming in the balcony and the balcony getting dirty in rain. And the number of people facing this issue will also be a lot.
4. Prototyping the final idea (Prototype)
Now is the time to get the hands dirty and make it come to life. Now is time for prototyping the final idea. First I tried to find some inspirations online which could help me in understanding the design of the product. The inspirations that I found out were:
Inspirations:
Then I quickly sketched out a rough version of the prototype keeping various aspects in mind like the user should be able to enjoy the open sky while in rain also, to achieve this I used transparent glass. For one user the height of the 1st floor was low and extending things beyond the balcony can cause hindrances to vehicle movement or other things, I think this problem can also be faced by a lot of other people also so I made the front portions of the glass foldable.
But when thinking about the mechanism of the foldable glass, it became very hard to implement. I tried various techniques to implement it in the blender(3d modeling and rendering software). But I was not able to implement it then I iterated the design and came up with a new design.
In this design, It consists of rain sensors that detect rain and then automatically extend and cover the balcony. Manual control for expanding and collapsing the ceiling extender is also given to the user for the edge cases. I made the glass come out of each other with the help of a hydraulic rod system which is in between the glass represented with dotted lines in the diagram. The last part is made up of flexible glass which can bend and unbend when needed and also the last part of the rod is also bendable.
The part completely covers the balcony and also extends ahead of it and bends. It is done to protect the balcony from diagonal rains.
Then I made the prototype in a blender representing the 3d model
While casually discussing with one of my group members, she noticed that the side portion of the balcony is empty and the rain could come in from that side and make the experience of the balcony worse, which I think was a good observation so I thought of implementing something to cover the side portion.
I was looking for a material that is foldable at the same time rainproof and can also be see-through. So I looked up on the internet and came across a material called Phifer Screen.
Then I designed a rolling mechanism for the side portion of the balcony:
The Phifer screen consists of a rollable screen with flexible plastic attached to its top and bottom portions. The top portion is connected to a hydraulic rod which opens and closes the Phifer screen and the Bottom portion is to give it more weight so that it does not move in heavy winds and also so that rain does not seep through the bottom.
Then I added it to the 3d model which I had and animated the whole thing.
5. Getting Feedback From Group Members (Testing)
We then come to a stage where I will have a reality check of the product. I got my design tested by my group members and they suggested a few things that could be improved in this design:
Some portions of the balcony are not covered so if the roof extender can extend sideways there will be no need to put the Phifer screen on the side part of the balcony and the whole balcony will be covered.
The roof should be adjustable which means if the user wants to open half of it, he can open half of it or to whatever extent he wants to.
The glass will make it expensive, so why not use transparent fiber instead of glass? And handling the fiber will also be easier than handling the glass. If it is in a village area people can throw stones & gloss might break.
The extender can extend towards the front first then it can extend towards the side portion so that it covers the whole balcony and there will be no need to put any rain protection screen on the side.
In the feedback the idea of cutting the cost of the product by using fiber instead of glass was good, so after getting feedback the first thing I did was I went ahead and compared the prices of glass and fiber which were ₹165 for transparent toughened glass panel and ₹50 for transparent fiberglass.
The suggestions I considered going forward were:
- Using transparent fiberglass instead of transparent toughened glass will reduce the cost of the product.
- Giving manual control to the user to choose how much roof he wants to extend.
I went ahead with this feedback cause I felt that one would reduce the cost of the product and the other will give the user freedom to choose how much to extend. Although reducing the cost of the product will reduce the durability of the product a little bit but the implementation with the rods will also become easier as the fiber material will be lighter. The rest of the feedback was very hard to implement and would also increase the cost of the product drastically so I did not consider other feedback going forward.
And the final design looks like this. There’s just a little bit of difference in the shininess of the transparent extender otherwise it is nearly the same except for durability:
Future Scope of the Work
I am really excited thinking about the future possibilities of the product, some of the things which I have that can be done in the future are:
- Give an opaque extender on top of the transparent fiber one so that the extender also protects from the sun.
- Giving it battery backup as during rain there could be power cut
3. Making the extender of some material that can turn opaque and transparent on user control. Like this: Smartglass Can Fade From Translucent To Opaque In A Second
4. Lighting effects can be built into the transparent roof for aesthetics.
5. Collecting the rainwater with a connected pipe and doing rainwater harvesting.
6. Making it of such material through which we can control how much light comes in.
These are things that can be done but these needs to be validated from users first before building.
Summary and Key Learnings
By doing all this I learned about the design process which turned out to be a non-linear iterative approach. By looking back I see that I have learned about:
Understanding the area of the user and his interactions with it: Empathize
Figuring out the problems of the User: Define
Ideating the solutions to the problems of the User: Ideate
Prototyping the solution which makes the most sense: Prototype
Testing out the solutions with the user: Test
And making changes that are feasible: Prototype
which is nothing but the design thinking process
Learnings from asking questions from the users
1. Don’t put answers in the user’s mouth like you use balcony for drying clothes know?
2. We shouldn’t give our own examples/problems while interviewing cause it leads the user into thinking from our perspective rather than him really telling about his experiences
3. Not to ask solutions-based questions like why don’t you use AC when you feel hot.
4. Not to put users in hypothetical situations cause hypothetical situations to lead to hypothetical problems.
5. Frame questions asking about their experience that help in bringing out the core problem.
6. While framing questions think about what answers they might give and how will it help me in getting some insight into the problem and where can I drill down to get to the core problem.
7. Frame conversational questions or open-ended questions.
8. Try to understand their goals, motivations, and pain point related to the area.
9. Get to the root of the problem by asking why.
10. In the end having a goal in mind helps, as I can’t remember all these steps cause they will hinder the process. These are the learning which come with time and understanding. And just empathize and understand the user better. These will become clearer and clearer as we conduct more and more interviews and these leanings come when I look back at the user interviews.
Learnings in defining problems
1. I should not give generic reasons while defining problems
2. And I also learned that I was defining some of my problems from solutions that I had in mind.
3. Defining the problem in a proper manner means defining it in depth so that when we go to ideation we will have clarity about what we want to solve.
4. Don’t define problems based on hypothetical situations.
Learnings in ideation
1. Setting a time limit and then thinking about ideas otherwise we will get stuck and will not be able to move forward.
2. Whatever comes in the time allotted keep it that way don’t try to make it perfect.
3. Don’t try to make super solutions that will solve all the problems cause then we will not be able to get in depth of particular problem properly and will not be able to solve it properly.
4. If aesthetics can improve the user experience then ideate around it but don’t make it the primary motive in ideating.
5. Choose an idea that I think can be a potential product, not a product that can solve all user's problems or an idea that caters to the max number of users from the users that you have interviewed.
Learnings in Prototype
1. However imperfect your prototype is just make it and don’t get stuck.
2. Try to keep it open to all but if we want we can have a target segment.
3. I got stuck in the prototype for days. I was not able to move forward then what I did was just went ahead with whatever came to mind and iterated over it and then came to the final design.
Learning in testing and changing prototype
1. Get good detailed feedback/critics from your group member.
2. Don’t take the feedback personally.
3. Implement only what you feel is right based on your best judgment.
I wanna thank you for taking out time to bear through this lengthy case study.
I also wanna thank Anudeep for clearing my perspectives and my teammates who have helped me a lot throughout this process. I also wanna thank my seniors who have guided me whenever I felt lost.
Some resources which might help you in your design:
builtformars.com: Here you can check out various case studies of already existing products.
ethicaldesignresources.com: Contains various resources like books, articles, tools, frameworks, etc
learnmobile.design: A curated list of mobile design resources.
uxdatabase.io: Information and free courses on User Experience.
cofolios.com: Portfolios and case studies of designers at top companies.
designer interviews: Interviews of designers at good companies.
practicaltypography.com: Online website book on typography
