A digital interface designed for microwaves to enhance productivity while delivering a swift and simple user experience.
In our busy lives, microwaves help us save time by providing quick access to hot food, but there have been times when we end up fidgeting with the microwave options, exhausting more time than required.
Heating something in a microwave can be relatively simple, but when you try to figure out how to heat something simple, it leads to a confused and irritating experience.
5 candidates interviewed were in their 20s and exhibited a busy lifestyle, with few in graduate school and few in the industry.
The Aspiring Entrepreneur
The Efficient Software Engineer
The Lazy Graduate Student
A less cluttered interface reducing confusion and making the user feel welcomed and at ease.
Maximum information, minimal interaction, and quicker access to task completion.
Minimize confusion by delivering a uniform and clarity-driven interface creating a trustworthy environment.
Optimum output with less involvement, liberating users from exhausting time at the microwave.
Easy to understand interactions and actions demanding less conscious reasoning.
A pleasing and responsive experience that users can navigate through seamlessly.
To gather a better understanding of the market and ensure my design ideas match the needs of the users, I browsed through widely sold microwaves over amazon, auditing products through user control and freedom, system status clarity, and minimal aesthetics. While evaluating multiple products, I observed products are generally falling under three categories.
Clean fascia but cluttered interface.
Minimal interface but lacked control and freedom.
Minimal interface but low visibility of system status.
Iteration 1
The initial idea was to have an iPod style haptic scroller serving easy timer settings and smooth scrolling while having a very compact and clean design.
However, soon, it was evident that using such scrollers to set precise minutes and seconds would require focus and meticulous finger movement, contradicting the very goal of having quick interaction to get the food heated. Hence, I decided to move onto a full touch interface and visualize how that would look like.
Iteration 2
To receive feedback on the early-stage low-fidelity wireframe, a quick guerilla usability testing was performed. Critical critiques captured during the testing helped structure my next iteration process.
Naming & information can be better.
Settings categorization can be refined.
Not enough space for input fields.
Confusion between weather & cooking temperature.
Unclear mode state.
Unclear button state.
Before picturing the interface's visuals, I wanted to visualize the key personalities that I am striving to deliver on the user experience.
Based on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania is the queen of fairies. The name reflects strong will, independence, control, and power; attributes I viscerally picture my users feeling while using the product.
The interface, while not going too far from a traditional microwave, should be simple to its core to use so that it is less mentally intensive and boosts productivity by erasing confusion. The interface needs to enable users to reduce and enhance their activity through automation. Whether it's their first time using it or the hundredth, I want the user to feel in control and at ease while using it.
The experience needs to personify the same principles, act consistently, and function together seamlessly. An intuitive experience helps establish trust, and a product that its users can trust builds confidence and an emotional connection.
Use presets more? Or prefer timers? Or you want to decide it at the moment?
Lock in whichever mode you want to get welcomed the way you like.
Your own customizable presets. Save foods with personalized parameters. Express heat your food as long as 9 minutes with just a tap.
Express heat or Instant start without worrying about setting the right heat level. Auto automatically senses the food weight, moisture, and temperature to set optimal heat temperature to provide evenly cooked food.
Save time and guesswork from cooking and defrosting using Auto.
Auto does all the heavy lifting to provide optimal heating distributed evenly and thoroughly.
With customizations comes liberation. Feel at ease with a product that acts more to your likings.
Save money and time using Smart Diagnosis.
Smart Diagnose assists you in detecting and solving potential issues with your system.
Smart Diagnose did not fix your issue? The interface can display you a list of common problems with solutions.
Don't feel comfortable doing it yourself? This IoT-enabled device also enables you to fix your software-related issues over-the-air or schedule a visit right from the comfort and convenience of your microwave with the help of Tech Support.
At this stage, assessing the interface's usability was crucial to evaluate the interface's design and ensure that it is intuitive and easy to use.
For the usability testing sessions, I decided on conducting two rounds with five users in each round, to validate issues and test solution iterations. All the interviews were conducted in person on my laptop, and each interview lasted about 30 minutes.
The testing shed light on some critical, major, and minor issues, which helped shape the next iteration process.
The underlying vision of this project was to find a scope of improvement in the microwave user experience. While not getting too far from a traditional microwave, this interface aims at validating that the microwave user experience needs not be complicated to perform simple tasks.
Interviewing users, capturing pain points through their behavior, comprehending their goals, and empathizing with their perspectives equipped me with the necessary ingredients for designing this concept interface.
Admittedly, one of the most challenging tasks was to distribute time judiciously. Deciding on which feature to include, prioritizing issues captured from user testing to focus on, and the uncompromising urge to push a design adjustment to make the interface a little bit better did get daunting. Nonetheless, peeping back at the core pain points I picked up during my interviews with five individuals always helped me adhere to my vision on why I started this project.
If I had more time in hand or if I were to continue on this project, I would love to dive deeper into understanding productivity through simplicity. I would love to make the interface even more straightforward with more customizations, lesser interactions, and higher accessibility.
Moving forward, one can make a lot of potential adjustments to this idea. Full fascia touch interface? Lesser buttons yet more information? Multi-informational button layers? At this point, the sky is the limit!
