The Opportunity
The isolation mandates heightened the loneliness epidemic, outside and inside the home. Masonite has the opportunity to change the "Closed door Culture" with doors that bring people together.
The Objective
Define and present how the loneliness epidemic relates to Masonites products and why Masonite should enter into this opportunity space. Conceptualize and design doors that will bring value 10 years in the future.
01
Discover
Together, but Seperate
The fast-paced lifestyle and digital distractions have disrupted healthy family dynamics, especially within homes, where closed doors contribute to social isolation. As a result, the quality time we have together in our homes, becomes the time we spend in our separate digital worlds.
How might We?
How might a door promote physical interactions in an isolated family and reduce digital interactions to enhance personal connections through habitual and behavioral reminders?
To help us select concepts we used a creative matrix to chart our selected HMW prompts against isolated features which helped us tackle the problem in smaller bits.
We down selected to Idea 2 because it was structurally simple and more culturally familiar.
02
Understanding Users
From Lonely to Loved
We supplemented our independent research with the user research that Masonite outsourced from Shapiro and Raj. After diverging with all the knowledge from our research, we converged using affinity mapping.
Insights
How we will achieve Masonite's Mission of Doors that Do More
What?
Research indicates a demand for structurally dynamic and emotionally responsive doors.
How?
Maintain structural boundaries, and simultaneously create open spaces for gathering
Why?
The value is to create doors that address emotional and functional needs of families.
03
Synthesis
Journey Map
We drafted a journey map for a dysfunctional family and identified the pain points and opportunities. We then plotted the journey map with Heartwood door in use as a comparison.
04
Final Design
Concept Presentation
The visuals on the door are in the form of ripples interacting with each other reflecting the activities happening from the people in that space. They display different states like occupancy, engagement, disengagement, harmony, and metrics summary.
Occupancy
When someone enters the room, their motion is detected and the display lights up with dynamic visuals as they occupy that space.
Engaging
When individuals are highly engaged, the door displays a visual that reinforces that positive interaction
Disengaged
When individuals are distracted by digital devices or not emotionally present, the door displays a negative visual that signals low interaction.
Harmony
When families are spending quality time, with high engagement, the door displays beautiful, harmonious visuals
Interior Ecosystem
Personal doors can display activity in other rooms and notify to engage with other rooms & people in the house
Patterns of Behavior
By sensing activity in the house, the door ecosystem can ultimately generate patterns of behavior to inform the family.
System Capabilities
A breakdown of the primary functions and technology requirements for the product
05
Behind the Design
Concept Dev. / Storyboarding
We evaluated Masonite's user research by creating 50 problem statements/use cases. We narrowed these to three, presented them, and selected one problem statement. We did a deep dive of research into this problem, and finally began brainstorming ideas.
What I learned
This project was 80% research and 20% design. It taught me the power of translating research into meaningful insights and persuasive presentation to leaders across disciplines in a company.
Skill Gained
User research, trend research, affinity mapping, problem statements, needfinding, storyboarding, user journeys, collaborative design, formal presentations.
*and I made a life long friend Sharvari Suresh, my teammate for this project
