WASH-E: Designing personality for futuristic washing machine
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Publicerad
2019
Författare
CHAIKITTIWANICH, KITTIPON
LEAKPECH, WASAMAS
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
Doing laundry is highly considered as one among many important household activities
as it is a common hygienic process, however, it seems to be a quite repetitive
and boring task based on the authors’ own experiences. With traditional box-shaped
machine and limited interface that have not been changed over decades, we could assume
that laundry business tends to direct research and development more towards
improving its functionality and efficiency rather than user experience. Therefore, it
is interesting to explore, design, and evaluate social interaction aspect of a common
washing machine and identify the key factors that have a potential to affect future
laundry experience and users behaviors in order to encourage sustainable use of the
machine and influence better user decision for each laundry session.
Wash-E is a design prototype that integrates various emotions and personalities
into the washing machine using a digital connection between a professional washing
machine and an android device. It aims to raise laundry users’ conscious regarding
sustainable use of the machine and to explore a new area in the design space of
social household appliance.
The concept of Wash-E is to create a character that represents a living soul inside
each washing machine. Wash-E’s dynamic personalities and emotions will give
social feedback to the users based on their selected washing programs or laundry
parameters in relation to sustainable energy usage and water consumption. It will
also educate users by giving laundry facts and tips. Moreover, there is a virtual
environment for each machine to be shared among other users with the purpose of
simulating the consequence of action and emphasizing the mood of Wash-E. The
whole user interface is newly designed to support both the emotional elements of
Wash-E and washing machine functionality. A couple of design iterations are done
and many design methods are applied and discussed how it work or not work with
this design project.
After the discussion of the final design, it can be concluded that the concept of
emotions and personalities in washing machine can affect the laundry experience in
both positive and negative ways. For positive aspect, the washing machine becomes
highly interactive and users can engage with the character. Users are likely to try
their best to keep it happy. This positive reaction can definitely to more sustainable
laundry behavior. However, there is a big trade-off between unnecessary interaction
and rich interaction which involves emotional engagement. It is quite a challenge
to include the emotional aspects into the users flow together with mandatory laundry
information, while balancing the importance and presentation of both aspects.
iv
Adding extra interactions can definitely interrupt or slow down the flow of users
whose main goal is to quickly clean dirty clothes. It may cause frustration or hatred
towards the character.
Nevertheless, new insights might pop up if a long-term design evaluation is done
in an actual context as it takes time to see the changes in settled behavior of an
individual and the acceptance of the new design in the laundry activity.
This master’s thesis report consists of 10 chapters: Introduction, Background, Theory,
Method, Ethics, Schedule, Final Design, Design Alternatives, Discussion and
Conclusion.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
interaction design , washing machine , emotion , personality