HOSTABLE - bring more to the table

Product Brief

Foldable table to facilitate efficient & satisfying use of small living spaces.

production METHODS

Product Design, Production & Cost Logistics,
Competitive Analysis,
Product Branding & Marketing

Duration

Aug-Dec 2017

introduction

HOSTABLE, was the product created in response to the challenge set by Integrated product development to design a product that facilitates efficient & satisfying use of small living spaces.

How we started

The challenge was to design and produce a product that uses "Efficient & Satisfying Use of Small Living Spaces". This was a challenging topic since each of us understood living spaces differently and had varied views on what constitutes as a 'small' space.

I spend time observing and researching campus environments to find on and off-campus housing places to find an area which could benefit from a "space-saving" product. My initial research concluded that places like dorm rooms and shared apartment housing are an excellent choice to start with since they are a common living spaces where we could explore how each person views personal and usable space differently.

My role was to understand the research brief and narrow down on the different areas on which we should focus our product design. I was also leading the discussions around which areas should be focused in terms of what constitutes as a 'small' space, how should we explore people's homes and work environments while respecting their privacy and ultimately focus on designing a product that fits under a student's or young working professional's budget (since those were the most likely customers who would benefit from our potential product).

What we made

Product-Value & Customer Discovery

We then started with building our Product-Value statement and generate features that would be important to our potential customers. After our initial customer discoveries and interviews, we concluded that people valued their privacy and also entertaining friends and family the most, irrespective of the size of their living space.

Then through concept testing, we then found that although privacy is a priority in people's lives, it essentially doesn't contribute to effective space saving. People value spending time with their friends and family and lack of a hosting environment makes this difficult. So we then decided to design a product that would help increase the horizontal space, yet reducing it's footprint when not in use.

conjoint analysis

Our team did some conjoint analysis to figure out what are the main features that we need to address, and came pondered over “How might we utilize our living spaces better? "

This lead us to our initial rounds of research, and the idea was on deciding how the user journey would look like and how can we make it different from what already exists in the market.

The major role for me in the conjoint analysis was assisting in the different concept cards for the multiple ideas we had around features and costing, to understand how much a potential customer, would be willing to spend.

Product Development & Testing

Website & Final Trade Show

The website had constraints of being one pager and working without any server side technologies. Given those constraints, the website was designed to be more like landing page, explaining the features and a video showcasing our product.

Click HERE to see the Hostable website!

My role included all the responsibility to design the website and code it as well. The content was finalized by our team and the website carried the branding that we had earlier developed in the process.

The final product was presented both in an online and a physical trade show, and we presented 2 versions of our table - one as an interactive product for visiting customers and the other as the fully opened table - Hostable in all it's glory!

At the end, all the individual effort that we put came together as a team and was only possible because of our collaboration, and willing to make a great space-saving product!