The first step to refining out design ideas

After brainstorming several concepts, we scoped them down to a set of five usage scenarios. The ultimate goal was to ensure that we had defined an appropriate set of needs in which we could solicit useful feedback in our focus group.

We spent a lot of time hashing out scenarios and deciding how to phrase the leads we presented to our focus group. We came up with five final scenarios and sketched them several times until we were happy with how the ideas would be presented.

Concept #1

Need:

• Seniors would like to be able to play their music in multiple rooms, so they need a portable solution
• Seniors need a player that is physically easy to manipulate.
• Seniors routinely play music, so the music player needs to be integrated in an object that can be put to daily use.
• Seniors are reluctant to incorporate technology that they do not understand, so they need a relatively familiar object and interaction mechanism.

Lead:

• Have you ever found that you can't play your music in every room or place in your home that you would like to?
• Do you find yourself not listening to music simply because you forget to turn it on? Have you ever 3. found that you wanted to play music, but had no player nearby?
• Do you feel like your music player is cold and austere?

Concept #2

Need:

• Seniors tend to listen to the same music a lot of the time, which means that might be missing out on music that might interest them.
• Seniors like to keep in touch with friends and family, and love to receive gifts (such as CDs).
• Seniors like to maintain a healthy social network, but have limited means of communicating.

Lead:

• Have you ever gotten a recommendation of a song from a friend? (E.g. “have you heard the song where so-and-so says ”...”?)
• Have you ever wished that you and your loved ones could use music to communicate and keep in touch?
• Have you ever heard of a song that you thought would be perfect for a friend or loved one, but had no convenient way of telling them about it?

Concept #3

Need: Seniors associate songs with situations, experiences and people meaningful to them.

Lead:

• Have you ever wanted to relive a pleasant experience which music was a part of, or to remember the person who gave you your favorite CD?
• Do you feel like your scrapbook/photoalbum is missing something?

Concept #4

Need:

• Seniors usually do not have a lot of CDs, but they also do not have a good storage system for their CDs as well
• In order to find a CD, they have to rummage through different small piles of CD, so they could use a place to consolidate everything so that songs are easier to find.

Lead:

• Have you wanted to play a particular CD, only to find that you can't seem to find it?
• Do you find yourself not have a good place to keep all your CDs?
• Do you find your current music player is needlessly complex?