The Overview
What we did in each quarter (each of the 3 quarters were 10 weeks long).
The Snake Pillow
After spending a few weeks exploring a few different white spaces, we decided on the general problem statement:
Design a product to improve the experience
of sleeping upright while traveling
Traveling includes:
-
Transportation between two locations for a trip (airplanes)
-
Waiting in a stationary space between transportation periods (terminal)
-
Frequent transportation between two familiar locations (commute)
Design Research
We conducted a user survey with 54 respondents to discover the pain points when sleeping while traveling. We then interviewed experts in "comfort during sleep" like a physical therapist, a United Airlines product designer, and a travel pillow product developer.
Insights from surveys, a focus group, and expert interviews
Head bobbing
legs cramped
Factors causing discomfort when sleeping upright
Back pain
too bright
Cramped legs
Bumpy ride
Root Cause Analysis
We created maps that show the different pain points brought up in the focus group and user surveys we held.
narrowed down to physical pain points
created initial need categories
Understanding the User
We created personas and journey maps to aid our brainstorming and root cause analysis.
The journey maps allowed us to explore 3 different scenarios: sleeping during a car road trip, on the way to work, and while flying. After defining our 3 personas and laying out a few of the steps in their journey maps, we brainstormed questions we had about each journey. These questions informed our mockup brainstorming and research and helped us discover the external factors affecting upright sleep.
Benchmarking Existing Solutions
The team used Amazon searches, product reviews, patent research, and discussion boards to analyze the current existing solutions on the market. The team ordered the most positively reviewed solutions with ranges of support, adjustability, and portability in order to begin testing with users.
Mockups Used in Benchmark Testing
5 participants performed the test on the above 6 mockups while in a moving bus. The participants attempted to fall asleep with the pillow for at least 20 minutes and commented on the same categories afterwards.
The participants evaluated:
-
their likes and dislikes of the pillow
-
the pillows' comfortability on a scale of 1-10
-
the likelihood of users using the pillows in public
Challenge:
The users were having trouble answering on a scale of 1-10 (too many options). We decided that future testing should have 1-5 likert scale instead of 1-10.
2 main categories brought up by users:
support
comfort
Each user reported a different level of support for each product. There were varying comments on the supportiveness of each product, so our product will need to be adjustable in order to satisfy the preference of each customer.
Defining Our Final Primary and Secondary Needs
Our user surveys, expert interviews, journey maps, research of existing solutions, and benchmark testing informed our final primary needs and secondary needs.
We decided to primarily focus on comfortable, supportive, and adjustable when brainstorming our first mockups.
Defining Our "Comfort" Need
After performing benchmark testing and defining our needs, we realized we needed a more concrete way to measure comfort (especially since we observed that comfort also varied by person in our benchmark testing).
When I began researching how other designers and researchers were evaluating comfort, I came across research publications that would later inform our testing and need specifications.
Using these, I created support and comfort user tests to use for our mockups. The test included:
Comfort questionnaire with categories:
-
ease of use
-
fit
-
long term position
-
overall comfort
SmoothTrack app that tracks head movement of user wearing neck pillow
Use of 1-5 Likert Scale
Solution Design and Validation
Brainstorming!
We all sketched 20 designs and came together to discuss them.
After categorizing them into the categories of leaning forward, being held back, and neck pillows, we made the quick mockups below with the supplies we had at hand.
the "No Head Bob" held back mockup
Leaning Forward mockup
the Double J neck pillow
(an adaptation of the Elephant benchmark product)
Iterating
We decided to move forward with the Double J Pillow after giving each mockup to 5 users for 5 minutes and discussing their complaints and compliments and considering the benchmark testing results.
new iteration of Double J Pillow
We added the inner structure of coolant hose and wire to ensure adjustability.
When tested with users, the support structure was too hard to bend and the diameter of the pillow was too large.
In an attempt to decrease the profile of the Double J pillow by building it from scratch (instead of using a pre-existing shell), we developed the inner structure for what would become the Snake Pillow.
Comfort and Support User Test:
Purpose: Evaluate how the Snake Pillow and Double J Pillow's support and comfort measure up against the top benchmarks from our benchmark testing.
-
Each of the 5 participants attempted to nap for at least 20 minutes with each mockup
-
During the naps: we tracked their head movement on 3 axes with the SmoothTrack app
-
After the naps: participants filled out our Comfort Questionnaire adapted from the Cornell Ergonomic Seating Evaluation
Our mockups outperformed the benchmarks significantly in every category of comfort.
The users preferred the Snake Pillow because of its adjustability.
Coded and analyzed data
Legend
We tracked the yaw, pitch, and roll angles of the head while using each product.
We also categorized and counted the amount of negative and positive comments on the categories of structure, adjustability, support, comfort, and ease of use.
Optimizing the Final Product
After we confirmed that the Snake Pillow outperformed the Double J Pillow and other benchmark products in our user test, we decided to focus on optimizing the Snake Pillow.
We aimed to improve the support and comfort of the Snake Pillow by optimizing each of the materials of the product.
Deflection testing ---> optimized the inner spine
Support Point Testing ---> optimized length
-
finding the shortest length of the pillow that still allowed our users to use the pillow in its preferred positions
-
marked the lengths used in each position
Fabric Testing ---> optimized comfort of outer fabric
-
handed Snake Pillows with various fabrics to users
-
discussed most preferred fabrics and why
Compression Testing ---> optimized portability
-
In order to differentiate our product from others more, we set out to find the most compressible yet comfortable memory foam.
-
We hoped to add a compressible bag that would minimize the diameter of the product when rolled up for optimal portability.
The Final Product
