OVERVIEW
In a corporate innovation course, I partnered with 6 other interdisciplinary students to assist our industry client, Bosch, with their vision — a future where machine sensing is robust enough to sense more than humans.
In this case study, I highlighted a few processes and takeaways in our project that set the foundation for our final recommendations. This was a very successful project that mirrored industry practices, and received great responses from our client.
MY ROLE
Product Designer
METHOD
Competitive Analysis
Market Sizing
Market Research
User Research
Usability Tests
Strategic Planning
TIMLINE
Feb. 2020 - May. 2020
TEAM MEMBERS
Alex Heyison - Designer
Aubrey Kalashian - Software Engineer
Bin Li - Product Designer
Emily Yang (Me)
Molly Mercer - Mechanical Engineer
Nick Shariat - MBA
Stephanie Wang - Product Designer
PROBLEM
Bosch had developed a cutting edge acoustic technology, currently called SoundSee.
It's AI algorithm utilized deep audio analytics and machine learning to sense the surrounding. With this algorithm, Bosch can use machine learning to analyze subtle acoustic clues to help companies improve diagnostics and take preventive actions. In other words, SoundSee makes sound visible even when it cannot be heard.
Since SoundSee is currently at its early stage of development and marketing, Bosch was looking for an entry market that can maximize it’s potential.
SOLUTION
After numerous of interviews and research, our team have
Identified the industry where SoundSee can make the most impact.
Devised an entry strategy for product expansion
Created a Most Awesome Product (MAP) to demonstrate the value SoundSee can bring
MY CONTRIBUTION
During the initial scoping stages, I facilitated our conversation by encouraging my teammates to visualize their ideas on whiteboards. In the white-boarding process, our team was able to better understand others' concepts, which significantly sped up our discussion.
I also helped set expectations and internal deadlines by visualizing tasks to be done and project deadlines with our project manager. Also, when we were in the phase of need-finding, I advocated for more user interviews beyond Bosch's subjective experts. After obtaining more buy-in from my teammates, we interviewed 6 more users who helped us clearly identified our target users and highlighted the value that SoundSee would bring.
Lastly, I also orchestrated the whole design and testing process for our MAP with my two other product designer teammates. We went through several rounds of the design-test-learn cycle to validate the needs and ensure the final design is user-friendly.
OUR PROCESS
The following image provides a glimpse of our design process. It simplifies many of the iterative steps taken in between the research and MAP development phase. The insights we generated during user testings and explorative interviews shaped our product strategy roadmap and final recommendation given to the client.
