This project is a result of my 1st semester assignment for UX Experience course at my University, the Howest Hogeschool. 

The goal of this assignment, and particularly for me, was to create a digital solution for a problem of a sick person who is not feeling well, that might be even exhausted but they still need to go to work. I wanted to resolve this by firstly asking myself specific question: "How Might We...?". You can find all the possible question propositions that I have came up with during my brainstorming sessions in the Ideation part of this page. However, to highlight the one most important thing for me, when I was deciding on my HMW Question, was that even though my problem was related to a sick person who was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, I wanted to take this opportunity a bit further, and I therefore tried to generalise my HMW question, to be able to help a bigger spectrum of people to affect and maybe even inspire someone. This way, I have naturally came up with a question How Might We make the work environment less overwhelming?. 

After deciding on my HMW question, I have moved to the next step which was finding my best possible solution for this specified question. I have firstly made some brainstorming techniques such as creation of my Mind Map as well as usage of a 2 SCAMPER techniques, more specifically C standing for Combine and S standing for Substitute. You can read more about these in the Ideation section. Thanks to these techniques, I have found my 3 best digital solution for my problem, but only one of these three was the winning one. It was an idea named "The Workload Regulator" that was standing a winner in my eyes. This solution consists of a light-weighted , imperceptible necklace that the will workers wear for keeping the track of their health state while at work, however this necklace is only the small part of the solution, the bigger, most important part is a device, something close to a camera, but with even more special inputs and abilities that will track and analyse the work environment, the surroundings of the workers and appropriately give suggestions or if desired, even automatically adjust the surroundings whenever the workers get overwhelmed. It is well thought and too complex process to be written only here, therefore, if you would be interested, you can read even more about my possible device solution in the Ideation process. Of course, I know I might be a bit hectic and messy worker and I am truly sorry for that, but believe me, I tried my best ,but in case you really wouldn't be able to read my hand writing (which I would totally understand) or if you would be even more interested in this idea, don't hesitate to contact me 😉. 

But of course, the main point of this concept of my solution is not about having the best hand writing, but I believe it's about the quality, originality and even maybe about the surprise aspect of the idea. So let's ask myself a question, why do I think that this concept, my solution, is SO SPECIAL? Well first of all, because as I believe, it's targeted for a broad spectrum of work environments and for people which could highly benefit from this idea if it would be brought to life. Secondly, this idea does not require any actions from people who are working, it simply runs by itself as it was programmed, detects inputs and needed actions by itself and creates solutions and applies them automatically. And we all know very well, that if there is something that can be simplified for people, something that can minimise the actions people or better say workers need to take, they will always be inclined that, to anything that simplifies their life, and this device does EXACTLY that. But of course, to finish up this "quick pitch", it's not only about simplifying life, but also prolonging life, because this solution reduces the stress in work, calms the environment and therefore if people have less stress, they also indeed live longer. Just check out this link and find out yourself.

So... let's all help one another live long & stress free life (without ever getting overwhelmed again at work 🥳).

In this section, you can firstly see an image of a problem I was inspired by to create my digital solution, this is not my own creation, but a work of one of my classmates that was dedicated and created on a base of UX Notebook assignmentt, about which you can read more in one of my Behance projects named UX Notebook. 

The second image is my own creation of a problem storyboard which is a way to quickly and clearly introduce the viewer with the problem without too much text and explanation going on. And as you can see, in the storyboard I am retelling the story or better say a problem from the first image. 

In this section, I am showing my thought process starting from asking myself a How Might We Question to resolve the problem and later on, based on my best set HMW question, I am implementing brainstorming techniques such as MindMap and 2 SCAMPER techniques. First one, is named Combined and here I let a website generate a random word for me which was a "cup" and I am combining the attributes of a cup to find some solution propositions for my problem. Secondly, I am using a Substitute technique where I decided to try and substitute the part of the process in a restaurant. 

The next 5 images, are representing my ideation process of getting to my top 3 ideas. First I have written down some best possible solutions that I have got from the brainstorming session, and from all of these I have selected the Best 3 ideas which are The Workload Regulator, The Get Extra Help App and lastly The Inspector Bracelet, you can of course read more about these in the images below, since each one of them has it's own description text. And for those who need only a quick visualisation of these solutions, I have created a quick visual / sketch mockups for each solution which can be seen in the second image (second row).

In this section, you can see my solution board containing and representing my best idea: "The Workload Regulator". This solution contains a necklace and a device for detection and analysation of the work space. More about this device and it's competencies can be read in the Ideation section in the "Workload Regulator" Image description.

During this project, I have not only learned about the importance of pitch formulation, and the way how to communicate my idea but also, I have realised, that as for a visual representation (storyboard / solution board) how big of an impact can for example just an angle have, when we don't use any text or give explanation. An angle can change a LOT, as well as the estimation of the proportions and the same counts for highlighting or line play eg. line as an eyebrow can totally change an expressions of a face when drawn badly while doing a quick sketch. 

One of the biggest challenges for me was to draw storyboard and solution board, It was very hard to work spotlessly with clear and simple lines where all the out of the line mistakes are easily seen. Also, getting my handwriting polished was quite challenging for me, so even though I love to write, my handwritings are not really immaculate and easily readable and I also needed to re-do few of them too. But all in all it was quite fun, also mainly because it felt a lot meaningful too.