# Approach  

We conducted a 75-minute workshop with 17 seventh graders to introduce them to the nuts and bolts of user research and help them practice their new skills. The end goal was to prepare them for play testing with seven-year-olds to inform the next iteration of their game design.  

The students quickly absorbed the who, what, when, why, and how behind user research. It was clear they already had a baseline understanding of certain research fundamentals, like how and why to ask an open-ended question. Through a class brainstorming session, the students crafted some of the following research questions:  

- Is the game too easy or too difficult? 

- Are they having fun? 

- Is the game too complicated for a seven-year-old to understand?  

![day-school-body1.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/day_school_body1_b097daff73.jpg)

After clarifying criteria for a successful game as well as defining what they wanted to learn through testing, they split up into groups to write their discussion guides. Then, each team conducted a pilot where they observed fellow students playing their games, asking them questions about their experience.  

In a quick debrief, students shared some of their observations and learnings from the pilot:  

- Some users left the game before the moderator had time to ask questions. 

- Some teams who made the prototype together had different interpretations of the rules.

- Some noticed students playing with their prototype in unintended ways. 

- Some prototypes didn’t function entirely as expected.  

![day-school-body3.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/day_school_body3_daa8be96cc.jpg)

# Impact  

After the workshop concluded, students held these takeaways in mind as they continued working on their prototypes, discussion guides, and testing structure to address some of the challenges they experienced before meeting with the seven-year-olds. The following changes were made to the testing protocol:  

- Have three users at each game for five minutes 

- Spread the games around the room to prevent users from going back and forth 

- Create a fourth station to brainstorm additional game ideas so that students were engaged in an alternate activity while they weren’t testing a game. 

<br/>

Jeri Countryman, Director of the Innovation Lab, commented:  


<highlight class="quote">

><quote></quote>
>_For me, one of the major takeaways for the students is knowing that the work they are doing is an authentic process. I also think that many of the students realized that the prototypes of their games can continue to be improved with user feedback… The session worked really well and the seventh graders all said they left with ideas on how to improve their games — and all the second graders said they want to make games!_ 

</highlight>

EchoUser is excited to see how the students absorbed and executed user research methods and experienced the impact of user feedback. We hope that exposure to user research in middle school will support these students in appreciating the value of observation, empathy, and designing for others — not just themselves — in future projects and beyond.  


Teaching students how to prototype games and improve them by collecting and implementing user feedback.


Workshop

[Children’s Day School](https://www.cds-sf.org/) launched its Innovation Lab for middle schoolers to engage in collaborative, experiential learning and tinkering through an iterative design process. For one of their projects, students created games for younger students to play at an upcoming school-wide event. EchoUser partnered with CDS to help incorporate user research into their design process and, specifically, to prepare students to test their games with users. 


Children's Day School

# Introduction

**Home is a place where we are with our loved ones**, where we feel warm and secure. Among many different staple household activities, having food at home ties closely with these fundamental needs. This is why people love preparing and cooking food at home. However, many of us inevitably end up wasting the food we don’t use. Remember the last time you found spoiled fruit or vegetables in the back of your fridge that’s been there forever? Yeah, it happens to all of us. We may feel bad as we toss out the spoiled food, but it still happens over and over.  

To increase the user adoption of our proposed solutions, they need to be easy to use and fit different types of homes and lifestyles. After all, not many people want to transform their houses into a sci-fi movie set.

# Approach  

To identify problem spaces, we interviewed 15 people who shop and cook food regularly across age groups, household types, technology comforts and shopping habits. Surprisingly, regardless of people’s unique needs and situations, there were some common themes in wasting food at home.  

![got-food-body1.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/got_food_body1_cd7d9ac0b1.jpg)

For example, many people forget what they have in their fridges, pantries or garages. As a result, the food goes bad in the dark without anyone noticing. And for those who do remember there are expiring foods to be used, they often lack the time or inspiration to cook meals at home.  

Guided by our research findings, we defined a set of principles to inform our design decisions. To make people’s lives easier and ultimately, reduce food waste at home, we wanted our solution to fit different types of lifestyles, increase the visibility of the food at home, and inspire people to cook more.  

![got-food-body2.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/got_food_body2_88c6c721d7.jpg)

# Impact  

A mobile solution “Got Food?” was created first as a way to address changing contexts. There are four components of the app:  

- Inventory shows people what they have at home 
- Shopping List lets people add shopping items and suggests what to get based on their inventory 
- Recipes encourages people to make the most use of their inventory 
- Analytics helps increase people’s awareness of their food consumption and waste.  

![got-food-body3.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/got_food_body3_ca1c227733.jpg)

However, considering our defined principles, a mobile app shouldn’t be the only answer to the problems we were trying to solve. After all, the most intuitive way to check what you have in the fridge is to open the fridge.  

After several rounds of ideation, we made use of an everyday object, a fridge magnet, to surface food information, allow direct manipulation, and encourage collaboration among family members. It’s also perfect for the less tech-savvy.  

![GotFood_Featured.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Got_Food_Featured_b7d962197e.jpg)

Engaging tangible mobile experiences to design a smart food tracker, helping people reduce food waste.


EchoUser Labs

Do you hate throwing away spoiled food? EchoUser interviewed 15 people to identify common problems and create a mobile solution called "Got Food?" with inventory, shopping list, recipe, and analytics features. But they didn't stop there - they also developed a fridge magnet to help reduce food waste and encourage collaboration among family members. Now, you can save your food and have fun doing it!


Got Food?

# Approach

To address Nordeus' requirements, we proposed conducting a heuristic evaluation. This method allows for the rapid identification of usability issues within a user interface by having experts assess the product against established heuristic principles.

# Heuristic Review

Heuristic reviews offer timely and cost-effective feedback for designers at any stage of the design process. Although this concept has been utilized predominantly in software design for nearly three decades, we adapted it for video game evaluation.

We customized standard heuristics to assess games by examining existing literature and developing our own set tailored to gaming elements. Our heuristics resemble Nielsen's but incorporate considerations specific to gaming.

# Focus Areas

We focused on identifying areas where gaming elements were either absent or inappropriate, such as: the presence of an engaging background story, the balance between guidance and player independence, and whether the game becomes repetitive over time. If so, we sought to understand the underlying mechanics causing this repetition.

![nordeus-hero.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/nordeus_hero_072e934be8.jpg)

# Our Process

Six usability experts participated in our heuristic review. They played the game for one to two hours, taking individual notes on usability and playability. We then consolidated their feedback, assigned severity rankings to the identified issues, and provided Nordeus with a prioritized list of areas to address in the Spellsouls redesign.

# Conclusion and Recommendations

We concluded the project by delivering a comprehensive findings deck. This presentation detailed our process, usability insights, identified issues, prioritization, and recommendations for Nordeus to consider as they continued with Spellsouls' design and development. By applying a modified heuristic review to the gaming experience, we gained valuable qualitative insights that will not only inform future iterations of the Spellsouls mobile game but also guide the development of new gameplay and narratives for Nordeus' upcoming products.

![nordeus_body4.jpg](https://echouser-api-media.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/nordeus_body4_3f1c44ac12.jpg)


Customized heuristics and usability testing to enhance the gaming experience.


Nordeus Game Usability

[Nordeus](https://nordeus.com) is an award-winning independent mobile game developer, with 160 employees based in Belgrade and international offices in London and Dublin. Their mobile game, [Top Eleven](https://nordeus.com/games/top-eleven/), is the one of the most successful online sports games ever made, boasting over 140 million registered users.  

We teamed up with Nordeus to conduct heuristic reviews and user research on their new game, [Spellsouls](https://nordeus.com/games/spellsouls/), to discover opportunities for gameplay improvement. 


Gaming Heuristics & Usability

Our design philosophy is from the inside out. As in, **user centered design** for meeting _product users_ wants and needs. **Human centered design** when broader humanity is the goal. Expanding; **any concept or thing can be the central focal point of design**. 

- We've used design-focused hackathons as a novel approach for Any Experience clients, both privately; e.g., [Wearables](http://localhost:3000/stories/echo-user-design-jam-wearables-in-the-workplace), and on a wider scale; e.g., [Asteroids](/stories/hack-space-save-planet-earth), and won awards ourselves in contests such as [Farming Innovation](/stories/yee-haw-celebratin-halloween-farming).

- Stanford's [Design Your Life](http://lifedesignlab.stanford.edu/) is a great external example... As a counterpart, read one of our team members reaction to a death, [Designing for Death](/stories/designing-for-death).

- Also see, [Earthquakes](/stories/innovate-earthquakes). [Festivals](/cases/the-festival-experience). [Pregnancy](/stories/experience-innovators-babyscripts-on-the-quantified-pregnancy-experience). Ok, not humans, but still: [Cat avatars](/stories/designing-avatars-for-cats). [Dog avatars](/stories/designing-avatars-for-dogs). [Cat-centered design](/stories/5-stages-of-cat-centered-design). Dog Hierarchy of Needs... And more! [Contact us](/contact).

maslows_dog-2.png

Really, Anything

Holistic design is the **process of creating meaningful experiences**. These experiences are understood in **context**, are constructed from underlying **goals**, and perceived in the **whole**. (The opposite of [missing the forest for the trees](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/miss%20the%20forest%20for%20the%20trees#:~:text=idiom,a%20few%20parts%20of%20it).) This approach is the foundation for applying our process to anything. 

- A crowd favorite is public transit. **Everyone is a researcher with their complaints. Everyone is a designer with their suggestions.** See our BART ride-alongs ([case](/cases/bay-area-rapid-transit-bart)) ([story](/stories/everything-can-benefit-from-design-including-the-daily-commute)). Envisioning SF Bay Area wide transit. [Taipei transit](/stories/transit-behavior-design). Korean smart cars.  

- The [Social Robot](/cases/robo-cam-the-social-robot) vetted broad context to uncover concepts for a novel home assistant. 

robo-2.jpg

Holistic Design

large_any-new-5.jpg

medium_any-new-5.jpg

small_any-new-5.jpg

thumbnail_any-new-5.jpg

any-new-5.jpg

Apply UX to _anything_. Trains, raves, farms, death. Everything is a human experience...




Any Experience

A holistic design approach to clarify the North Star user experience for anything. 

**Everything is a human experience.**


Domains

Methods