Validation of the design

Hi!

We are almost at the end but still important thing was left to do: Validation the idea with prototype. As decided after finishing the prototypes, we used this one for the validation part.

 We interview 3 persons for this. They were 2 male university students and 1 female adult student from age 20 to 32.

And how was the actual validation done?

1. We took one of our test persons (who use a doll to validate our product) and showed all the features of the chair with the storyline and explaining the feature that existed in prototype and the ones not implemented features. 

2. We allowed person to examine our prototype themselves and hold it in their hands.

3. We asked them comments based on the prototype. We had followed questions prepared if the conversation would not follow automatically:

                      - What were your feelings during the explanation?

                      - How do you think this chair would fit in a school environment?

                      - Is some feature missing? / Is some feature too much?

                      - Open comments?

Main responses with got were the following:

“It is an interesting idea.”

“It would probably be ground-breaking if this was widely used in schools or elsewhere.”

“Quite innovative idea, how did you come up with this??”

“It would be so good for health.”

 “Well build I must say”

“I would use this if it was possible”

“I was sold with the optimal working position because I have looked ages for a perfect chair to work”

“I would buy this home also”

“Quite versatile in a positive way like it has many features so it offers something for everybody”

“I would have hoped for sleeping position also or footstool to add in”

“Probably this will take a bit more room than ordinary chair so how will they all fit in the classroom?”

 “Good idea this standing up but how can I see the lecturer is someone in front of me stands up?”

“Won’t the sounds of treadmills distract the lecture?”

 “I personally am a little skeptic if I could concentrate on lecture while walking but some it might even help the concentrating.”

Based on the answers the idea of smart chair is positively faced. User are actually looking for better chair to work and this chair would be perfect for them. Some of the comments show that this is high tech and futuristic for user but after the got the change to touch the product and examine it, they were all very impressed with the idea and one said it was sorry that we are not actually going to produce this idea because they would like to buy it right away.

 There were only few concerns related to the product. Mainly about how would the chair perform in classroom environment. Because if it’s size or sound it makes. This was something, that was discussed in our team also. And we were imagining that this chair could be used in auditory rooms or the virtual screen the chair has would work like AR display but in reverse so it would delete the person standing in front of you so you can see the lecturer no matter what happens in front of you. About the sounds, in our design, the chair would not make any noisy sound and could be even totally silent. One participant said it might be too fancy in a regular classroom, instead of using in a regular classroom it might be useful to use a specially designed class or for the different purpose, though he liked the idea of it. 

Moreover, as we are in the very beginning of the design process and we had few limitations of time and resources, so there is a lot of possibilities to develope this more. after all we gathered all the comments and if we develop this further we will keep this in mind.