Human-Centered Design Methods at UC Berkeley:
Wilderness First Aid Kit
In Fall 2021, I took a human-centered design course to learn skills and methods involved in processes for developing customer-driven products, services, and systems. The course consisted of a semester-long team project in which we designed and developed a product in response to our defined opportunity.
My team’s focus was on wilderness first aid. Throughout the semester, we worked through four phases:
Identify
Understand
Conceptualize
Prototype, Analyze and Communicate
Our final product was a re-designed first aid kit that was customizable,
easy to maintain, and intuitive to use.
Teammates: Victor Detavernier and Henry Warder
Phase 1: Identify
Phase 1 consisted of identifying an opportunity for a new product. We examined social, economic, and technological (SET) factors, conducted user research, and identified stakeholders to establish our product opportunity gap.
From the information we gathered, we created 50 product opportunity statements focused on outdoor enthusiasts and their experiences with safety in the wilderness. To arrive at our final statement, we grouped them into similar themes and then used a weighted matrix to narrow it further.
This process informed our final opportunity statement:
“Empowering recreational hikers to be prepared for non-life threatening wilderness injuries by creating a customizable, easy to maintain, and intuitive product.”
Phase 2: Understand
The goal of Phase 2 was to determine the opportunity’s characteristics and constraints. We conducted further 1:1 interviews and performed user observations and empathy research during this time. We also performed walk-throughs using low-fidelity prototypes. By asking users to walk through the last scenario in which they used their first aid kits, we could reconcile what people told us with what they did and observe the potential pain points they encountered. The insights gathered from this research were used to create user personas and a journey map.
From our research, we concluded that:
(1) many users don’t know the tools available to them in their first-aid kits
(2) users value long-lasting materials and reliability in their first-aid kits
(3) users value the ability to customize the components of their kits to tailor them to the specific needs of the activity and
(4) users like the ability to replace things in their first-aid kits after use.
These insights helped guide our evaluation of competitors and the crafting of product requirements.
Next, we reviewed our competitors and created a Value Opportunity Analysis (VOA), in which we defined various categories in which our product will add value to the user and specified our product requirements. Our main themes are the ease of use, durability, and customizability of the product. When verbalizing our requirements, we use words such as “must,” “should,” and “could” to categorize the level of importance—“must” signifying a mandatory requirement.
We then found these requirements to be especially important:
Concerning ergonomics and ease of use, the product MUST be easy to identify in a backpack and it MUST be easy to search through.
Focusing on durability, we think users MUST be able to easily replace individual components of the product, and they MUST be able to tell when to replace components.
Last but not least, customizability will also be one of the important categories. That’s why the product SHOULD provide space for users to add their own items and MUST be adjustable according to the space remaining in the user's pack.
Phase 3: Conceptualize
In Phase 3 we ideated and chose a final product and concept.
To generate a robust list of concepts, we combined individual and group brainstorming. We generated 10+ concepts on our own, as well as using the 3-6-5 concept generation method and two 15-minute concept generation sprints. The goal of each sprint was to conceive of as many ideas as possible in a 15-minute time limit - a total of ~17 more ideas were generated as a result.
The team ended with about 75 concepts. We created sketches for each concept and uploaded them to a Miro whiteboard. We then used the Miro whiteboard for our concept grouping, selection, and evaluation. Some of these concepts were similar and more or less related. To organize our ideas, we used a 2x2 Matrix and created categories for grouping - both shown below.
We used Dot-Voting, a modified Borda-Count method, to further narrow down our concepts by ranking them in three ways: Feasibility, Consumer Confidence (that we perceive), and Excitement (for us to prototype). From this, we selected seven different concepts to prototype for further testing.
2x2 Matrix
Above is a 2x2 matrix with concepts organized on a spectrum of “High Tech”/“Low Tech” and another that we called “Unified Items”/“Individual Items.” The horizontal axis attempted to capture how items were connected—whether it was easy to take apart the individual compartments or if the compartments were placed more permanently in a certain location. On the vertical axis, we captured engineering complexity.
Grouping and Dot Voting
Here, we separated the concepts into groups based on form or functionality with labels such as "App for Tracking & Planning" or "Cylinder/ Hard Shell." This allowed us to better distinguish between the similarities and differences of the different concepts. The image above is of us performing our Dot Voting on Miro.
Phase 4: Prototype
In Phase 4, we brought the product to life!
Here, I learned the importance of low-fidelity prototyping at an early stage. While creating many rapid prototypes, we gained valuable insights such as buildability, ease of finding items, and ease of packing and unpacking. For example, I first made rough prototypes of one of our concepts called “roll up bag” simply with paper - and we began to learn about design details such as ease of rolling and pocket geometry. I also made a few prototypes with tape and ziplock bags, which we used to do some user research and discovered the importance of having see-through pockets and compartment openings that are easy to find.
During this process, we concluded that the “Roll-Up Kit” and a similar version called the “Fold-Up Kit” would be the final designs to further explore with a high-fidelity prototype.
Images below showcase the build, display, and testing of our “Roll-Up Kit” featuring Henry!
Reflection
During the semester, we discussed this definition of human-centered design:
An approach to developing and leveraging a deep understanding of potential users and stakeholders toward the creation of novel interventions of value to the stakeholder community
- Nancy et al., 2018 -
In this course, I learned various methods for developing a deeper understanding of users and stakeholders and organizing these learnings to gather actionable insights to inform product requirements. We wrote our product requirements in ways that communicated the value added to the user, and this guided our prototyping and testing to create a successful product that addresses the user's needs.
Poster and display at the design showcase - We did it!