Redefining Moving

Overview

After moving two times within the last few years — once from my home in San Jose to college at Berkeley and the next from the dorms to my current apartment— I can attest to how taxing the process can be.

In the fall of 2018, I got the opportunity to use human-centered design to research the moving process around Berkeley and to design a simpler and more effective product that not only made the whole experience easier on the body, but also effortless for the mind.

This project was an individual design endeavor over the course of one month and was heavily focused on design research, ideation, and prototyping with the final product being a set of physical, brightly colored edge-guards and tags with attached QR codes that would be placed on moving containers; this product complemented an already existing application, Sortly, to result in the smoothest moving process possible when used with one another.

*some of the included photos have captions with extra details if you hover over them

Role & Duration

design researcher and product designer

research, contextual inquiry, comparative analysis, persona development, ideation, prototyping, sketching, usability testing

Personal design project

Aug 2018 – Sep 2018

Setting the Scene

First things first, it was important to define what the moving process was.

I decided to split the process into five different stages based on location and the corresponding behavior respective to the setting.

User Research

Equipped with these questions, I went out and started to interview people.

I wanted my interviews to be succinct but also informative, so I came up with an interview guide that consisted of questions related to each stage.

Being a college student, I was lucky enough to have plenty of friends and acquaintances who had all recently moved. This made it easy for me to find interviewees within my target audience and, over one week’s time, I conducted a total of twelve interviews with students from varying grade levels and demographics.

affinity mapping

Next, I created an affinity map by looking through my findings and picking out any notable quotes, separating them based on which stage they were associated with.

I categorized the quotes as either a feeling, a thought, or an existing issue within the affinity map.

After looking through the data, a few prominent behavioral patterns began to arise. One of the main takeaways was that these students did not have a hard time transporting items at all and that they were more likely to be concerned about the psychological complications.

The feelings, thoughts, and problems of these past movers illustrated to me that the moving process was a confusing, disorganized, and uncomfortable experience for them.

persona development

Using these findings, I came up with two user personas:

The first persona was that of a freshman who had just moved from their home country/city to college.
The second persona was that of an upperclassman who had moved from the dorms to their apartments.

The solution was not about finding a faster and more efficient way of transporting items from one location to another, but should be heavily focused on solving the lack of mental organization during the process as a whole. And thus, the purpose of my design became:

To create a more visually coordinated and systematized method of moving that fostered an informed, organized, and comfortable moving experience.

Ideation

user needs

With this objective in mind, I came up with four user needs. These needs correlated with the three “sub-goals” that were stated within the objective and were utilized as a rubric for my ideas.

brainstorming

I started the ideation process by jotting down some quick ideas and sketches onto a few sticky notes.

Some of the ideas included:

An app that helped you sort what items you needed to bring and which items you didn’t need,
A space optimization app that helped to relegate items within different boxes and then generate floor-plans for each box in order to maximize space usage and efficiency when packing,
And a personal “moving handbook” that gave you Geo-specific advice on the location you are moving from and the location you are moving to which helped with assimilation and other aspects of moving.

choosing a solution

After looking back through all of the solutions, I picked the three ideas that seemed the most viable to me in terms of the user needs they met and the potential they had to be impactful.

In the end, I ended up picking the “Scanning App + Signaling Device” because it met every single user need and the “needs” it did not meet were actions the user could take before the moving process.

Sortly

Before I went into prototyping, I decided to do some more secondary research. It was at that point I discovered there was already an app on the market, Sortly, that fulfilled the function of the “Scanning App.”

Prototyping

solution

One of the largest factors that fosters a smooth transition from one place to another is the ease of mind offered when one always knows where their belongings are and what exactly is being moved throughout the entire process. By making sure the mover always feels comfortable and organized during the journey, this level-headed mindset allows them to better hold their ground in the midst of a drastically changing environment.

Not only did the colored bands and the complementary application make the mover more informed, more organized, and more comfortable, I believe it held the key to transforming moving itself: Emotional and psychological guidance channeled through physical means of application.

sketching

I sketched out a rough outline of what the product would look like and highlighted its features.

Usability

user testing

If I were to work on this product in the future, I would create another iteration of the prototype with the feedback I received. The new product would include designing a website/ordering system where the mover could input custom dimensions of their moving containers; I would also develop more sizes and shapes of the colored bands in order to fit more containers.

Reflection

Moving is not merely a physical endeavor.

It is a full-bodied experience filled with mental road-blocks and adversity. If we do not tackle these issues, a large part of the moving journey will be left forgotten and untouched. We need to begin to think about the process as a whole instead of focusing on an endpoint-centric issue. Moving is so much more than just putting things in boxes and unloading them at another place; it is an entire journey filled with hardships at each step of the way.

Although my product is a long ways from cutting edge technology, I hope it illustrates the direction that products are heading in and also gives a brief overview of my design process. By viewing the consumer journey from a birds-eye view, people are able to innovate and create with more foresight and breadth to produce revolutionary products.

This project really blew my mind with what I was able to discover about moving. When I initially started it, I thought I would end up designing a simple product that solved a simple inconvenience during the moving process, but it ended up being so much more. I hope you enjoyed this read and maybe even learned a little something about moving.

I would like to end on this note:

The next time you help someone move, remember to offer them not only a helping hand, but also an understanding and empathetic heart as they maneuver through this decidedly complex and chaotic journey.