Product design of the Hyperfocus capsule.
The brief
My brief was to design a Hyperfocus capsule for high-income professionals, with a way to simply enter hyper-focus and productivity state. I need to deliver sketches/wireframes of the product, and a rationale for my process.
So — my first question is: What are the needs of the “high-income professionals, that value method to simply enter hyper-focus and productivity state”? My first impulse is to research and read some articles that explore the topic of high productivity, flow, and designing an environment where this is common. Also, even if the buyer might be a high-income individual, most likely the ones who pay will be an employer. So I want to design a Focus chamber that is both good for employers and employees, while super useful for folks who work from home.
I’ll research about common pains that distract people from focused, flow state. Additionally, make a survey and ask around, in a target focus group or look-alikes.
Also, suggestions and input from medical specialists regarding ergonomics will be a must.
The Sprint format
I’ll use Google Ventures sprint and break the process into five days. I’ll spend about 1 hour 30–60 minutes on the process. As the usual process requires much more time and of course people.
Using this as a basis I can begin answering some questions.
1. Unpack
What is the business case?
It’s never been done before, it’s got to sell, people need to be insanely amazed by the product. It has to be insanely good. The risk of copycats is severe, if it sells well it can be reverse engineered, produced, launched within a year, or even less. That’s why it has to stars with a boom, and capture the market before competitors show up and reduce the profit margins.
What are we trying to achieve?
A highly marketable product, since it’s the first mover. There were plenty of examples in history where first movers didn’t perform too well, and their competitors that showed up later executed better and won. So it has to be not only well or even insanely well designed based on the user to provide benefits of high focus work chamber, with ergonomics and other vitamins, it has to be very marketable. A product that is easy to sell, that people want deeply, but no such thing exists yet.
What existing research do we have?
None. We’ll have to dig deeper and find some answers to a few critical questions.
First of all, who is our user? We know they are high-income specialists, whose quality of work mainly depends on how much focus/flow they have.
But what matters to them? How do they currently manage their focus/work? What are their pain-points? What downsides do they perceive in their current style of work? Obvious downsides such as interruption, noise, uncomfortable desk/chair, stress staying in working position for a longer time.
So we have to make a product, that addresses these needs and removes all the obstacles that are most common distractors to great work.
Planning
2. Sketching — I’ll be working on my own. Taking frequents breaks and reflecting on the device. Since it will be sketching of a device rather than an interface I’ll gather inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci, the man got some neat sketches of futuristic technology. Maybe some concepts from the design of everyday things.
3. Decide — I’ll ask around in online design communities and professionals who are my target group.
4. Prototype — building a paper or other ‘prototypes material’ might be an option, but I guess I’ll go deeper into more quality images that will make better-looking sketches look more realistic, and give a feel about what can the product do for the user. My best case is having a landing page worthy material and prototype as deliverable.
5. Testing — i hope to draw some people in and test the ‘demo landing page’, get some feedback, and improve on the product as with input from the users the end result will be much better than from only me.
Risks
If I decide to work on the sprint for 8 hrs, and it’s my first time doing this from start-to-end, with only reference, a blog post about this process, the chance that something “Insanely good” comes out is slim. I’m thinking about spending “extra” on prototype parts.
Research begins
My research will include a survey, which I will design after figuring out what information is essential in order to support the work.
3rd party sources and research on the concept of hyper-focus and common pain points of people who are unable to enter the state of focus. For 3rd party research and exploration to be effective it is important to define constraints, so that research does not take more time than it should and overcome “analysis-paralysis”. So I’ll set up a small blueprint of information I’m looking in a design thinking way, I wish there…
Research blueprint
I wish there was information on top distractors/paint-points of developers and let’s say designers job.
- The need to be stationary for 8 hours a day. standing desks help, but not enough
- “This is one of my biggest complaints about the job. Unfortunately, standing desks, under-desk cycles, and I would guess (though have not tried) treadmill desks, are not complete solutions. I am certainly not as focussed while I’m using my under-desk cycle than I am when I am sitting still in a chair. It’s great for certain types of dev work, but not great for when I need to learn something new or tackle a really critical situation. I wish this work was more physical, but alas, it’s just not.”
- “I’m freezing all day long, while some of my coworkers are apparently sweating. I think it has to do with the fact that the AC outside of the conference rooms is much more “efficient”, and these coworkers use the conference rooms way more than I do.”
- “Not being disturbed. Being able to stay focused. This is one that managers don’t get. They don’t take into account how important it is to focus on writing code to be productive. They assign seats on some random process with no regard to keeping developers undisturbed. I suspect that open offices cost more on productivity than they save.”
- This isn’t specific to development, but feeling burnt out at the end of the day, every day. I also struggle with getting enough sleep, getting enough physical activity, and finding time to just get other things done. If I could, I’d only work 25 hours/week
I wish there was a list of “lifehack” type strategies to overcome these focus obstacles.
- Decluttered desk, maybe the product doesn’t have one so it’s impossible to mess up
- drinks/snacks within reach, designated space for workstation
- chair-desk-computer sitting ratio, if it’s well made it’s easier to sit multiple hours, this will be a key feature, to find a golden ration, so users with various body shapes can easily configure the station to their benefit.
- isolation from noise, earphones, closed doors, this is a must for workstation
- more clean air, temperature control and correct lighting, air filters, temperature control, and smart lights can be installed to improve focus and productivity.
- a place to keep your stuff, bag, phone, pen/paper., coffee.
- isolation from other people, ideally it’s a device where you can close the doors sort of creating that isolation to work on your tasks.
- maybe some smart/system reminder about sitting posture, heartbeat, breathing, tools designed to keep yourself at peak form and have a tool that provides feedback.
I wish there was article on a topic of sitting postures impact on health, focus, energy levels productivity.
- this video captures the basics.
- pretty interesting article that covers alternatives to sitting at the desk, what if this workstation can be that flexible? read here
- there is actually a company alltwork which took some of these ideas and made a 7k workstation and another one
- and here are some options on the market, regarding relaxation at work, I hypothesize that a workstation that allows the user to relax and still work will blow focus and flow states of the charts. some overview on what’s on the market here
- and some more options and analysis on ergonomics, https://www.producthunt.com/alternatives/better-posture
https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/ergonomics/sitting/sitting_alternative.html
http://www.ergoquest.com/zero-gravity-workstation-10.html
https://www.amazon.com/IWJ20-IMPERATOR-WORKS-Computer-Workstation/dp/B07FFNK9W2
That’s about it on third party research, maybe spend some time on sci-fi versions, I’m sure there are. Cause the thing definitely futuristic.
The Survey
Honestly, 3rd party sources and research gave me plenty of information, but I’ll still go forward with the survey, maybe it will give me some surprises. Now, what is the ideal outcome of the survey? How can it benefit this design sprint?
I’ll list some of my assumptions which need to be tested:
1. I assume that there is a demand for this type of workstation since altwork has over 1m youtube views and charges 7k for the station. There is also competition, which indicates that there is a market.
How will I test this? Questions such as:
- Are you aware of this product? I assume not many are aware.
- Describe a situation where you would consider buying this 5–7k workstation. I aim to gather some user stories which I can use later.
2. I assume that developers or other heavy computer users would want to work at a company that offered something like this. I’ll use these questions to test this:
- Would you rank a workplace higher that offers these workstations to employees? I wish to know would workstation has an effect on potential employees to seek employment at this company.
3. I assume that workstations would increase focus and productivity, also have a positive impact on health. It’s a groundless test to do in a survey.
4. I assume that potential users would pay more to have extra features, such as sound isolation, light therapy, air purification. Questions to test assumption:
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5. I assume that survey participants will have their own ideas of what features such a workstation should have. Micro ideation phase.Questions:
- what features do you wish your ideal workstation to have?
You know what, even though I wrote things what I want to get out of the survey, I won't run it any further than that, in this case, I’ll base my judgment on previous research, since there are similar products in the market, it would be neat to run a survey with people who already own the workstations, build more accurate user personas, etc.
This research zoned me in and I’ve read plenty of articles about the topic, my biggest discoveries were:
- There are products in the market based on the idea of workstation, which is a great sign that there is a demand for this kind of thing.
- There is potential in expanding features of workstations, and making it a solution for more focus and less distraction.
- Altwork product launch was largely successful, it got featured in the media a lot, it’s product got almost 1mil views in youtube.
- The retail price of a good workstation ranges from 5 to 8k, I saw even a 15k one.
- Great UX and design of a workstation are very important, as I saw ones that offer functionality, but look plain bad.
- Developers and other professionals suffer extreme pain of focus/productivity in open office/noisy environment it would be wise to secure such workstations for employees who earn 200–300k/year.
- Sitting at the desk for ~6–8 hours/day is also a major pain point, but current solutions address the sitting comfortably part quite well.
By this point, I’ve spent a substantial amount of time on research, and I’ve enough material to move forward.
Diverge! — Ideation in all directions
The aim is to explore possibilities of furthering this distraction-free workstation
I’ll use paper and writing/drawing tools for this ideation.
Problem Space, So what exactly is the problem?
User story / cycle
I’m thinking what user story should it be. And what I wish to get out of it. I’ll go for two user stories, one when the person is using the workstation and another, where he buys the machine.
Sketching and merging
Now, this is challenging as it’s my first time doing sorta industrial design, although it might look amateurish and rough. The goal is to imagine how would these current workstations look if they had been optimized for focus. So I’ve added some view-blocking options, that keep a person from visual distractions and light therapy options in the second sketch, a custom light setting that benefits the user.
Sketch v2
Conclusion
Overall I’m satisfied with the result. I might dive deeper into industrial design and improve the sketches with more detail and logic but that was not my aim for this micro UX case. I was surprised, or maybe not, to find these workstations in the market when I started researching, and my key finding was that they still have plenty room for improvement, especially in blocking distractions either visual or sound, although earplugs/music might work better.
Things I could have done better
There is always room for improvement. My key pain point was finding out that industrial design has a similar process but is a different animal. Sketching wireframes is one, and sketching how should prototype look and adding features is another. Later converting the sketches into higher quality visuals and showing it to other people for their input/feedback.
How much would it cost to make a working industrial prototype? Paper one ofc not much, but usable one, hard to imagine. Plus all the improvements etc. Sketching was much easier because I found similar products and but it also limited my imagination as I worked based on current products in the market and did not design the workstation from scratch.
Usually, when working on Product design there is a team of marketers, developers, you name it, and mindful facilitation and contribution from all of them greatly improves the final deliverable. By working solo I was limited in a way.
