Carousel

As a research lab with a human-centered design focus, it is important to collaborate with business units to add value to future products not only from a technological standpoint, but also from a user experience point of view. In collaboration with the home print division, we selected some of their concepts to prototype and test. Shown here is the Carousel concept by Bart Massee and Ken Musgrave of the home print division. The concept was of a printer that prints throughout the day, while rotating to fan the prints on a charging base station. We built a prototype, ran a small cafe’ study to solicit feedback from users, and learned about how they perceived the device, what they expected from it, and how it could exceed their expectations.

Why it matters: Using a physical prototype, we ran a small cafe’ study to solicit feedback from the public and used the feedback to inform future designs (see the Lightbox concept). This sort of feedback helps to jumpstart phase 0 of product development, giving it direction, credence, and allows the print division to begin to invest their resources into realizing the product. Moreover, it allows for iterations on the concept to address potential shortcomings.

Contributions: Physical prototype, user study.

Team: Eric Faggin, Bradley Wittke, Mithra Vankipuram. Bart Massee, Ken Musgrave (HPS).