The Gallery Walk helped to expose important design factors that may never have occurred to us otherwise. It felt valuable to see exactly what outside viewers took to be the strengths and weaknesses. Often, after spending solid amount of time working on a project, the same ideas begin to circulate, and it is difficult to bring a new perspective in, when you have been staring at the same problem for hours. Something as simple as a third party sharing their opinion can spark a new train of thought and develop the process even further.
We collected positive and negative feedback, both of which strengthened our design in some way. The positive feedback that I found to be the most constructive was which celebrated our main goal of not allowing the bag to interfere with the crutches. As we collected our goals, we decided that in every design, this should be the main feature. It is reassuring to see that others agree, especially because our designs are heavily based on this. Along the same lines, one person seemed very excited about the fact that one of the ideas could clearly hold a water bottle. Even though the one giving the critique isn’t the user, it is nice to have a universal view of what features stand out to people. Perhaps the most glowing review was one labelling an idea as “a highly functional sack.” This was confirmation that we are heading down the right path.
The negative feedback was even more useful. The piece that stood out most to me was one criticizing the time frame for opening the bag that we had described in our specs. We had thought that 20 seconds was an appropriate time for a bag to be opened. Of course, we would have realized that it was a problem at some point, but after doing research to change that spec, we learned a more important lesson. Doing research is crucial, even if we do not have a solid prototype yet.
Another comment that truly made us think was one mentioning a particular design and its feminine look. I hadn’t realized that our process had ignored typically masculine or unisex aesthetics, and given that our point of contact is a woman, I wonder if we would ever have noticed. As aesthetics is one of our most highly rated goals, this was a hugely important wake-up call to receive. At the same time, we seemed to be so enamored with the aesthetics that we forgot to ponder the amount and quality of the material used, all leading up to the cost of the product for us and the consumer, which at the end of the day, is one of the most key features in a bag. A $500 bag could be the most beautiful, functional bag, but what good will it do if no one can afford it?
We had been thinking about adding an extra strap to the design to make it more comfortable and less “clunky” but after reviewing the feedback, it became very clear that we did not communicate that design feature well at all. In the same vein, we seemed to run into other communication issues. Stability refers to the contents of the bag, and is a fairly big part of our design, so it was a missed opportunity to not make that clear. The biggest issue with communication was our list of goals. While it was comprehensive, we did not realize that it would be more helpful to have it in one condensed sentence.