3.5 Decomposing by Sequence of User Actions

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society

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University of Pennsylvania

Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society

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This is a course aimed at making you a better designer. The course marries theory and practice, as both are valuable in improving design performance. Lectures and readings will lay out the fundamental concepts that underpin design as a human activity. Weekly design challenges test your ability to apply those ideas to solve real problems. The course is deliberately broad - spanning all domains of design, including architecture, graphics, services, apparel, engineered goods, and products. The emphasis of the course is the basic design process: define, explore, select, and refine. You, the student, bring to the course your particular interests and expertise related to, for instance, engineering, furniture, fashion, architecture, or products. In prior sessions of the course about half of the participants were novices and about half had prior professional design expertise. Both groups seem to benefit substantially from the course. All project work is evaluated by your peers -- and indeed, you will also be a peer reviewer. This format allows you to see an interesting collection of projects while getting useful feedback on your own project.

From the lesson

Week #3: Design Concepts

The goal of this module is to move from defining the problem to designing a solution. You'll begin by learning about the exploration phase, and you will exit this phase with a number of design concepts for peer review. You'll also learn how to decompose a design to evaluate its overall function, and essential process in creating good design essential to the life of your design. Finally, you'll learn how to critically examine past design artifacts to inform your current concepts so that you can sensibly differentiate your product. By the end of this module, you'll have created 10 solid design concepts, and you will have received feedback on those concepts so that you can move to the next phase of the design process: prototyping.

3.1 Exploration Introduction14:42

3.2 Exploration with Individuals5:02

3.3 Getting Physical3:21

3.4 Decomposition10:25

3.5 Decomposing by Sequence of User Actions9:47

3.6 Decomposing by Function21:35

3.7 Competitive Artifacts6:20

3.8 Scoop 10 Concepts4:49

Meet the Instructors

Karl T. Ulrich
Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The Wharton School

Another approach to decomposition is to decompose the problem by a sequence of

users actions. This is particularly useful with service

design problems or with problems that can be thought of, design challenges that can

be really thought of as involving a fairly well defined sequence of user actions.

So, To illustrate the service decide

application let me take the auto rental problem.

Now we might frame the auto rental challenge the, the problem statement as in

what way might we provide a better car rental experience.

And that just uses the convention that I introduced in the problem definition video

"In What Way May We Provide a Better Car Rental Experience?" Now if you think about

the sequence of users at User Actions for most people when renting a car, it begins

with shopping and that involves booking. It then involves pick up, the time of

travel. There's then typically some kind of use of

the car and then there's drop-off. Now, of course, there are.

Multiple ways to describe that sequence. This sequence is not unique.

This is just a useful way for you as the designer, to break the larger design

problem down into pieces. So, if you think about it, the sequence of

user action: shop, book, pick-up, drop-off; then you can start to imagine

what are some opportunities to improve each of the pieces.

And for a service designed problem that's usually fairly straight-forward, most of

you will have no trouble identifying some opportunities here or some, some, some

ideas here based directly on your user needs research and your observation of

the, of the experience for your user. But just to give you some examples, so if

you take just dropoff, I'm sure that those, those of you rented a car, at least

in the United States. And know about the really annoying

experience about refueling the, the gasoline or the petrol in.

In returning the car. In the US they make that very difficult,

because the auto rental companies tend to make money on refilling the, the fuel.

So there's a lot of pain around that and there are probably some nice opportunities

to think about how to make that work better.

Personally, it all also annoys me that they don't user better fuel gauges because

you don't really know that the fuel was full when you got it and it's difficult to

actually measure how much fuel you used. And you know another frustration around

dropping off is that you lose things. You forget your camera or your phone or

your eyeglasses. So maybe there an inspection.

Step that a car rental company could perhaps inspect for belongings.

Now, you can take that kind of logic for each of the steps.

So, for instance in shopping for the, for the car you know maybe you can have a

price guarantee. It's pretty annoying when you don't really

know whether you've got the best price. You could another cool thing would be if

the service provided for other options. So one of the things that I always wonder

is, should I actually rent the car, or should I, in fact, arrange for a car

service or a taxi? So you might say the booking process might

automatically calculate some other options other than renting a car.

The booking process itself hm, I wonder if it could have one click.

I know you'd have to worry about some Amazon patents if you used one click, but,

but that would be a nice thing. What if you didn't have to book at all?

So what if there were just guaranteed availability?

So no matter what, you show up at the airport and you just take the car.

You don't even need to book at all. That would be pretty interesting.

Maybe there could be a mobile app for booking maybe the, the reservation system

could make the best guess about the characteristics of your booking from your

airline ticket automatically. It would know when you were to pick up and

when you were going to drop off. And where you were going probably.

In the, in the pick up experience, maybe you could pre-select the vehicle.

Maybe you could. Oh, this would be interesting.

What if you, what if you actually did the booking or did the paperwork within the

security zone, at the airport. That way you could just rely on the, the

airline or the airport of the government security process to verify identity.

You wouldn't have to do it again. You could, you know, if you saw a boarding

pass, you would know that, that would be the person who was, who was reserving the

car, so you just could do it all within the security area of the airport rather

than going out of security before you did it.

What if it could be at the curve at baggage claim?

Alright. You get the idea.

So in two minutes here, we've been able to make a, a list of some interesting

features and we were able to do it by decomposing the service experience by

sequence of user action generating some alternatives within each of those sub

problems. And then the last step, step would be to

take a combination. Of those pieces.

And create an integrated solution. Although in this example, most service

design problems. Most services, in fact, are really bundles

of features. And so, it isn't necessarily the case that

you would need to integrate these elements into one overall solution.

You could almost just look at which of these features, in isolation, make the

most sense. And which bundle or bucket of these

features, taken together, would best meet your user needs.

Now, just to show that this isn't. Only confined to service design problems.

You might imagine, if we were to look at the ice cream scoop problem.

So, ice cream scoop. Let's just think for a minute about what

that sequence might be. It might be, find the scoop.

Get out, ice cream, And dishes.

Scoop, ice cream. Cleanup,

And put away. Maybe those belong in the other order.

But, if, if you think about that. There are probably some insight you could

get in the ice cream scoop. Example, by considering each of these

elements in the use experience as a hint as to where there might be an opportunity.

So, for instance, finding the scoop, that might lead you to think about, you know,

bright colors. I don't know, storing in freezer.

What about an integrated what about an integrated?

Scoop. And, ice cream package.

Right. And all of that, those ideas come about by

thinking about that challenge of how is it that I find the scoop.

So that shows that you can get ideas for elements of a solution for a physical

product, in this case an ice cream scoop, also by considering sequence of user

actions. It need not only be the case that this is

useful in service design. But hopefully that gives you another

lever, another angle on how to take a large design problem and a blank sheet of

paper and start to make some headway to explore and find interesting solution

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