BACKGROUND

A one week short project focusing on learning the basic interaction design methods, such as user observation, interview, prototyping and user testing, etc.

We were asked to re-design the interface of the vending coffee machine used in UID which can offer several tastes of coffee and beverage for the UID staff and students.

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This project is a group effort with my three classmates, Kim, Vera and Yoakim.

RESEARCH

User Observations and Interviews

In order to get a better understanding of how the current machine works, we started with the user observations and interviews, during which we gathered information and feedback from users by taking photos and writing notes.

Problem Identification

From the observations and interviews, we made a flow chart to clear understanding how the user interact with the current machine. We then highlighted the problems by using the Heuristic Evaluation method.

Main problems we found:
- too many buttons
- bad feedback (sound and light)
- bad work flow, hard to follow
- no confirm button may cause misoperation

CONCEPT

Peacock: Twist Your Key

To activate the coffee machine, the user need to insert a rechargeable personal key into the key slot. The main idea of the peacock concept is that the key can be twisted to choose the beverage. This feature makes the order process more intuitive and convenient.

PROTOTYPE

We developed the concept and then made a low-fedility prototype for user testing.

USER TESTING

To give the user a more real feeling, we put our prototype on the actual coffee machine to conduct the user testing.

Main improvements from user testing:

- simplify the instructions
- change the order of beverage/coffee placement
- upgrade the icons of option buttons
- reduce the redundant buttons




I made a stop motion video to show the refined version of the interface and how to interact with it.