**Inventing a better way to clean glasses**

**UI / UX Design / User Research**
**Overview**
I am taking a design thinking + design principles course at Miami University. This project is part of the assigned materials from this course.
I identified the problem that I would like to research as problems associated with wearing regular/reading glasses. Before researching, I speculated that some of these problems may include: cleaning glasses, misplacing glasses, fogging lenses with face masks, rain on lenses, breaking glasses, etc.

The Ask

Identify a problem that people over the age of 50 face and solve it.

The Question

How can I make the glasses-wearing experience for people better?

The Goal

Eliminate most common grievances with wearing glasses in a single invention.

Required Design Thinking Process

Image credit: https://www.catalysteducation.com.au/news/driving-collaboration-design-thinking/

Empathy > Define > Ideate > Prototype

In this course, we are being taught the fundamentals of design thinking. It’s important to note that I have already defined my own personal design process that works for me due to having been exposed to design thinking from my internships at Kroger.

However, I will be following the given process above for this particular project. It’s important to try new ways of working and be open to changing your process if something works better.

Empathize

Smudged glasses are the #1 problem

Interviews

To begin research I organized a research protocol and conducted two separate interviews with members of my identified target audience: glasses-wearing people over the age of 50.

I interviewed one reading glasses only wearer and one full-time glasses wearer.

Define

Recognizing common themes and insights

I sat down to brainstorm some of the most common experiences when wearing glasses and grouped the stickies into the categories shown in the picture.

Insights

1. Misplacing glasses is a common problem because reading glasses are used only part of the time.

2. Glasses are easily breakable and hard to fix on your own (small parts).

3. Cleaning glasses often is a problem that can lead to neglecting glasses maintenance and cause eye strain from wearing dirty glasses.

Ideate

How Might We Questions + Brainstorming

Making the insights actionable and solvable was the main goal when creating the HMWs and brainstorming solution ideas.

Sketching

I sketched the best ideas voted on in dot voting by peers.

Prototype + Testing

A solution driven by user feedback

Final User Thoughts

Below is an example of some of the questions and responses that came from asking the users what inventions they thought would be most useful in their daily lives.

I was careful to not ask leading questions and get the users’ honest feedback about the ideas and what they thought could be better.

The Final Solution

Project Continuation

Transforming the solution into a formal app concept

The Process

I followed my design process to further develop this physical solution presented in the poster into an app concept. I followed the same process for design as I had before by gathering inspiration from other apps, sketching, wireframing, iterating and landing on a final solution.