VIDEOPROTOTYPE – GROUP 5

Meetings are quite infamous for their lengthiness, lack of participation from attendees and overall boringness. But what if meetings could not only be informative, but also entertaining? That’s exactly what our concept “Meet Bowl” is!

The way “Meet Bowl” works is incredibly simple. Essentially, “Meet Bowl” is a virtual meeting tool that has a voting feature on the progress of the meeting in the form of a digital salad bowl. Each participant can place virtual “ingredients” in the bowl to indicate that they are satisfied with the current topic and are ready to move on to the next item on the agenda. When all votes, i.e. ingredients, on the current topic have been cast, it is decided, that the meeting will now address the next topic.
Voting takes place completely anonymously as to prevent effects of social pressure.
Once the salad bowl is completley filled, attendees can decide to leave the meeting or end it altogether.

The benefits of “Meet Bowl” are obvious:

The game-like interaction can increase participant engagement while at the same time helping to make meetings more efficient. “Meet Bowl” allows accelerated discussion of topics which saves time and valuable resources.
It also provides an opportunity for speakers to get immediate feedback on the mood of the audience and to be able to react to it.
Through more active participants and clearer signals of progress, better decision-making can be achieved with “Meet Bowl”. It can also lead to a fairer and more balanced distribution of speaking time.

We believe that a concept like “Meet Bowl” could fundamentally change the meeting culture.

Concept – Group 5

As a result of the analysis of the five interviews we conducted, we formulated a number of insights from which we then derived ‘How might we’ questions. The ‘How might we’ challenge we agreed to tackle is: ‘How might we make meetings more entertaining and time-saving?’ We generated various ideas as potential solutions, and after some discussion and evaluation, we decided on three ideas to implement as storyboards.

The first idea is a progress bar represented by a salad bowl designed to speed up the progress of meetings. Meeting participants can indicate that it is time to move on to the next point on the agenda by adding ingredients to the salad bowl.

As the second idea, we conceptualized a gamification system that rewards completed tasks with coins. These coins could be exchanged for rewards such as snacks.

Our third idea is a tool that can automatically transcribe meetings using AI. After the meeting, users could use the tool to decide which points should be prioritized.

After receiving feedback on these ideas, we finally chose to implement the salad bowl idea as our video prototype.

USER RESEARCH – GROUP 5

BMW Group Digital Campus – Wallpaper

Living in an era of rapid technological advancement in which algorithms are becoming artists and machines are crafting masterpieces, Artificial Intelligence (AI) already became a tool that is used daily by many, especially artists. So is AI purely a blessing for us or does it come with risks we might not know about?

In order to get more insight about this topic, we interviewed five UI/UX-Designers from three different companies, adesso SE, BMW Group and Public Value Technologies, and inquired if they use any AI tools for their work, how their feeling regarding its usage and lastly if they see any risks of AI might taking over their work as an designer.

As expected, all of them use some sort of AI in their daily life, however fewer actually utilize it for their work. Regarding the future, the designers are sure that AI will become even more interesting and involved than it is already.

In the following days of the workshop, we will analyze the data that we collected. Based on that information we hope to develop a product idea to further support some of these companies.

VIDEOPROTOTYPE – GROUP 5

What is it ?

In the Workshop UX3 we had to decide on a product idea and then design it and finally make a video prototype about it. The product our group decided on is the concept of RecycleBär. A new and improved way to recycle batteries, which gives the end user a bigger attraction to recycle.

HOW DOES IT WORK ?

RecycleBär is a system that combines a physical object in the world and an app. The physical object is an automat, kind of shaped like a bear, and this automat is in a lot of different stores, so they can be found easily when going grocery shopping. The app will have 4 different screens, one that gives you a qr code to scan on the automat after the batteries are entered. The next one gives a balance of the points already acquired, then of course a home screen and finally there is a screen where you can exchange your points for different things like coupons for restaurants etc.

BENEFITS

The new system would give the end user a reward when recycling batteries and therefore make it more attractive to recycle and save the planet a bit more.

NEXT STEPS

In the future it can be added to directly exchange a certain number of batteries for fresh ones. Regarding the problem of how to finance the whole system, it can be suspected that with a bit of advertising some money can be made, another way would be that some companies want to improve their image and therefore invest in the system. That would be something that needs to be examined deeper.

CONCEPT – GROUP 5

After analyzing our interview data, we found that recycling batteries still resembles a problem. There are options to recycle batteries in our daily life, but those are inconspicuous and used irregularly and spontaneously. They also don’t offer any compensation. These factors cause many people to hoard their batteries at home, not knowing what to do with them or throw them into the trash, where they don’t belong. To counter this we designed a deposit machine linked to an app called “RecycleBär”. With this machine, recycling batteries is supposed to be more attractive. For better accessibility, they would be placed within supermarkets near other deposit machines for bottles, so everyone could return batteries without going out of their way.  The app is supposed to offer compensation for returning batteries by collecting points, called “RecycleBärchen”, and using them for discounts or gift cards in shops or restaurants. With this, we hope people will see more sense in recycling batteries.

User Research – Group 5

Arnd from Voltstorage, a employee in the support department, showing us the home storage device

Society has now been affected by the energy crisis for a couple of months, civilians and companies are on the look for different solutions. Our team decided to interview three different sustainable energy-companies, in a semi-structured way, to get a feeling of how certain branches are trying to solve the problems with a special focus on sustainable energy services and solutions. 

The first company we interviewed was Coneva, who is focusing on providing energy management infrastructures. Our next visit was to Voltstorage, a company focusing on new ways to store energy in clean and environmentally friendly manners. And last but not least we had a look at the family business “Elektro Dendl”, which gave a closer insight into the installation of solar panels. 

In the following days of the workshop, we will analyze the data that we collected. Based on that information we hope to develop a product idea to further support some of these companies.

Video Prototype – Group 5

What is it ?

As Team 5 wewould like to present to you our app called waySmarter. This app is not a standalone app itself but an app combining all sharing and public transport services available, by motivating you, with the help of a bonus point system, to choose the most sustainable route available.

HOW DOES IT WORK ?

The basic procedure of the app is being described as following: Once you installed the app, created an account and started the app you can swipe up to see the map with your own position, like on Google Maps. When having a specific location in mind you can type it in the search field. Once you entered your destination (and starting point) the app presents multiple options how you can reach your destination: The fastest, the cheapest and the most eco-friendly way or of course a combination of those options. You also can see the different sharing or public transport companies enabling the route you are going for. When selecting a preferred route you can see more details i.e. if you have to switch between multiple sharing companies. During the whole process you also can see the process of your collected eco-points in the top of the screen. If you i.e. choose the eco-friendliest option it fills up and you will get a notification when you have collected enough points to get a discount on your next ride afterwards.

BENEFITS

As you can see our  app has multiple benefits. First of all, you only need one app, one account and of course only one payment option, by still being very flexible regarding the diverse mobility options. In addition the app calculates several route options for you but still lets you choose freely out of several different options. So the whole process gets much easier and clearer and you safe a lot of time scrolling through several apps or worrying about the environment.

NEXT STEPS

Our next steps will be testing the app in the field and getting opinions and insights from different user groups. When thinking about future upgrades there are a lot of things that could be added. I.e. some kind of physical smart key device, so users are independent of their smartphone or internet connection. Also more route options, i.e. the easiest or healthiest route, including walking or cycling, could be added. And of course the complete radius of the app could be extended, making it not only available in the city but also when travelling between cities, i.e. including services like blablacar.

Concept – Group 5

After refining our insights, we gathered from the interviews, by combining multiple helpful methods we learnt in this course, step by step our concepts and with those our story boards, which were our main task in this phase, clearly started to emerge on our Miror-Board, which we mainly used to adopt our concept development techniques. Finally, three main ideas started to crystallize themselves out. We decided to merge two smaller ideas and to create two bigger ideas and therefore two storyboards.

Our first idea we chose is all about private car sharing and we wanted to specialize it in eliminating all the struggles Peer2Peer sharing brings with it, i.e., the lack of spontaneousness, flexibility and security. The way it could work you can see in the following story board.

Peer2Peer Sharing App

Our second idea was born out of two of our ideas. At first, we thought about all the sharing and public transport services that are currently out on the market and came to the conclusion, that there are so many possibilities out there, you need a ton of apps to find out which one works best for you to get from A to B, i.e. which one is the fastest or cheapest way? So, we decided to go with a concept, which combined all those sharing services and is also able to calculate the cheapest and/or fastest way to reach your destination, so you don’t have to spend additional time and getting confused with all those different apps. Because we care about the environment, we also wanted to include a third route option not only telling you the “greenest” way but also rewarding you for choosing that option by giving you a discount on your next ride. Of course, all three options could appear for one route as well. How it could work, we displayed in the following story board.

Combined Sharing App with Reward System

Discussing the ideas described above, we decided to go with our second idea, the all in one Sharing App. We are currently developing our video prototype for that idea, trying to showcase it in the next and final step of this UX3 course.

USER RESEARCH – GROUP 5

Zoom-Interview with our ShareNow contact.

Mobility is changing really fast. Nowadays, we can witness this firsthand, and we are also able to partially steer it in particular directions. As to which direction the mobility changes is influenced by multiple factors. One factor which affected mobility a lot recently is Corona. Even though one may think Corona only created obstacles, it also gave us a lot of opportunities, such as making us think about different ways to get from A to B, making us think from other perspectives.

In the last couple of days, we, as a group of 5 students from the LMU and participants of the UX course, interviewed a few experts from multiple companies, i.e. a carsharing company and an e-scooter sharing business, about mobility across a wide range of customers. We asked them about their problems they had to deal with before, during and after Corona and how they faced them, as well as about their ideas to even improve the mobility experience.

During the next couple of days, we want to use the insights we gathered from those experts and try to develop a prototype facing and maybe even solving the challenges mobility has nowadays and will maybe have in the future.

VideoPrototype Group 05

Our solution is named the Coffee Kitchen. Coffee Kitchen is an app that connects you to your colleagues enabling spontaneous meet-up, that feels just like having a conversation in a real coffee kitchen at work.

For this app, you only need to pick a spot in your own kitchen for a NFC station. This spot could be right next to your coffee machine, next to your snack box or the bread station. Putting a device on the NFC sticker will trigger the app and thus ping your colleagues with a notification that will encourage them to join you for a quick break. Your colleagues only need to connect with their own station in their kitchen and you guys are ready for a spontaneous video call during your quick break. 

As due to the COVID-19 pandemic many of us are working from home on a semi-permanent basis, challenging this way our work-life balance and blending the distinction between work hours and break times during the day as well.

Our product aims to restore this important separation and provide the possibility for employees to enjoy their break conversations in a more casual and flexible virtual environment. It helps to bring back the spontaneity of everyday life and the friendly atmosphere between colleagues despite physical distance, allowing them the chance to return to their work environment with a fresh perspective.

After testing our product with our target user group, we will consider adding new features based on our findings. Future improvements, such as boosting the performance of our tool and enhancing the user experience.