Excercise 3

As is probably apparent from this blog, we haven't gotten very far with this project because we've been having some issues with communicating in the group. During the third exercise we devoted some time to figure this out and decided to make Sofie in charge of leading the group, while I (Elisabet) will take care of the blog. We also started a Trello board to keep track of things. We are still finalizing the personas and scenarios but will have them done before the next exercise.

Our Trello board - the screenshot is taken a few weeks after this

We also did some brainstorming!

Different and simple types of brainstorming is a good idea to warm up the group and open up the design space, as Kristina Höök told us during one of her lectures. We can get to more serious ideas later on. It’s important to create many ideas and also let the imagination flow, nothing is out of bounds, to get the thinking going. The brainstorming activities were a lot of fun and it was nice to let go of trying to think of a good idea and just think of anything that came up in your head! Any idea can turn into a useful requirement.

The brainstorming activities we did during the exercise were word association and collaborative iteration. The resulting ideas were fun but functioned mostly as warm ups.

Here are some of the things we came up with!

Word Association

Collaborative design - two of the ideas

The wall outlet:

• A wall outlet that you can play with without getting shocked, it's a round ball with different outlets when you spin it around, like regular socket and usb.
• Yes, and the power comes from solar panels on top of the trains
• Yes, and it also works as a travel adapter
• Yes, and you can pay to get access to this and have that information in your SL card, which you use to activate the outlet
• Yes, and the power comes from the wheels of the train as well
• Yes, and the outlet has lights on it so it's easy to find even when it's dark
• Yes, and it also gets power from the power source that the train uses

The foot drier:

• A drier by the floor that you can heat your feet with and dry them when they are wet in the winter or when it rains.
• Yes, and there is also heating in the seats
• Yes, and foot support for people with shorter legs
• Yes, and the seats should also have cooling abilities
• Yes, and there should be tissues and cough drops by the seats for people who have a cold
• Yes and there should be trash bins...

We are doing the parallel design in two separate groups before the next exercise.