I observed how he rent a movie from the redbox. I interviewed him. We re-designed the interface of the redbox together. Design of Everyday Objects with Participatory Design Yurong He iSchool. University of Maryland Design old and design new Participant a: undergraduate student, male, 20 years old, used the redbox in Student Stamp Union once or twice a week for entertainment and kill time. Participant b. Food Coop employee, male, 60 years old, has worked in and bought food from Food Coop for four months. Participant c. young adult, work for an IT company, male, 27 years old, bought food from Food Coop for several times. “I usually just scroll left and right to choose a movie and then press 'check out’ and pay. It’s pretty easy to use. I like it. ” “The movie posters occupied too much space, I have to scroll so many times to see more movies…” “It doesn’t allow me to search movie directly, stupid!” Step 1 : Participant b categorized products in the room from two levels: 2 (Store bought and home made) x 3(temperature: cold, room and hot ). Participant b categorized products in the room from two levels: 2 (Store bought and home made) x 3(temperature: cold, room and hot ). Step 2 : So if we cannot change the space design, what else can we do if we really want to improve customers’ shopping experience here? “However, it is impossible to move the whole kitchen.” “The culture here decided the way how we work here. We change the positions of the food all the time. ” Participant c participated into design an mobile app to solve the problem. Before we started to design, he read and carefully to get inspiration of design. To employees could computing technology. tag the food in three levels in cloud. Food Coop employees update the tags and other details of the food every time when they change the positions or kinds of the food. To customers customers press the tag(s) at the bottom of screen which match their needs. Food Map will show them the location of the food they need. customers can also press any green square to see the detail information about the food located there. For example, if they press the square of Sandwich Kitchen, it will display the menu. How dose this app work? Re-designed already existing interface for the redbox with participant a : Compared with just displaying information beautifully (colorful movie poster but limit number), displaying it efficiently (black and white movies names but more than 20 movies) is more important to the participant. Don’t just allow computer to provide information to users, a better idea is that also allow users to provide information (some users already clearly know what they want) to the computer and then provide correspondent feedback. Designed a completely new app for having better shopping experience in Food Coop with participant b and c: Understanding users’ behavior, potential needs and context is very useful for knowing what we should design for them. Users might do not know what they want at first, but helping them to understand the context better could inspire them to discover what they need to make their life easier. Application can be a remedy for the deficient that already exists and hardly be changed in our physical world. Research goal: I conducted a short participatory design study to re-design the already existing interface for the DVD rental machine redbox and design a completely new app prototype for customers having better shopping experience at Food Coop. Method: participatory design with elements of contextual inquiry, and to accomplish these I used the techniques of observation and interview. Result1: For the redbox, we made three important changes: (1) changed the positions of buttons on the homepage; (2) changed the way of presenting movie/games ; (3) add a searching page. Result2: For Food Coop, we design a mobile phone app prototype named Food Map which can help customers to find the food they need much easier and faster in Food Coop. “I also like to press ‘ALL Movies’ to see more movies and search movies ” Press ‘RENT IT NOW’ Press ‘ALL MOVIE’ Press ‘A-Z’ Press ‘CHECK OUT’ and pay money Interview outline: 1. Participant’s demographic information (grade, major, gender, age). 2. Participant’s opinion about the redbox based on his previous experience of using it. 3. Participant’s using habit (frequency, functions, preference, dislike) 4. Participant’s reason/motivation and context of using the redbox. Press ‘ALL MOVIE’ Press ‘SEARCH MOVIE/GAME’ Press ‘CHECK OUT’ and pay money Press ‘RENT IT NOW’ Red means available, gray means unavailable. I talked to participant b, an employee and also a specific customer, to learn his opinion about Food Coop. I interpreted the data and captured key issues. We re-designed this space for more efficient shopping. Working at Food Coop “I have never pressed ‘PICK UP’, I don’t know what is use for. It seems useless.” “I have never pressed ‘PICK UP’, I don’t know what is use for. It seems useless.” “I rent game, but not very often.” We re-designed the positions of buttons based on different using frequencies. Type the name of the movie you want to rent directly in this blank. Then the system will show you whether it has this movie and is now available or not. We deleted the posters, only displayed the name of movies. We put the same type of food together. Home made together, store bought together, same temperature together. We hoped that these changes could help costumers to find the food they need more efficiently.