Jonathan Letourneau, MDesMDes: Master of Design Studies
I build and optimize UX capabilities for agile innovation teams within large organizations, leveraging UX research methodologies
to inform service delivery decisions for generative AI and emerging technologies.
Innovation Analyst | Mass General Brigham Emerging Technologies and Solutions (MGBETS)
UX Researcher | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Information Designer | Self-employed
Metaverse Curation and Relations Strategist | American Medical Extended Reality Association (AMXRA)
04. Inclusive Product Design in the Kitchen
MDES 234—34/2
RoleUX Researcher, Facilitator DurationFour MonthsProject TeamFourAudienceVisually Impaired Home Cooks ObjectiveExplore creative ways to develop and inclusive product for home cooks. ApproachBuilding empathy through an immersive research experience. Leverage the team’s cross-disciplinary background to explore desirability, viability, and feasibility. Challenges The short project duration precluded the team from conducting use research with a representative user group.
Project Initiation
Team building and topic selection
(visually impaired home cooks)
User Research
Empathy building through immersion
Data Synthesis
Review data from cooking without vision
Design & Prototyping
Blue sky ideation to explore the solution space
Decision to make textured
spice bottles
Creation of looks-like, sells-
like, and works-like prototypes
(desirability, viability, feasibility)
Overview
This project was a collaboration between design students from MassArt, business students from Babson College, and engineering students from Olin College of Engineering, focusing on creating kitchen products for people with visual impairments. The objective was to design a product that enhances the cooking experience for those with limited vision by addressing accessibility within the kitchen.
The team first set out to understand the unique challenges faced by visually impaired individuals in culinary settings. After conducting ideation sessions and empathetic research experiments, including cooking without sight, the decision was made to develop tactile spice bottles. This choice was driven by the insight that touch is a crucial sense for navigating the kitchen when vision is impaired.
My role as the user experience designer in this project was to lead the team through the empathy experiment and support the concept development and prototyping phases with agile practices. This approach ensured that the design process remained user-centered, focusing on the real needs and challenges of the target audience.
By exploring accessibility and service design, the project aimed to produce a practical and inclusive solution. The team's interdisciplinary approach facilitated a comprehensive understanding of the problem space, leading to the development of a product that sought to make cooking more accessible for individuals with visual impairments.
The project highlights the importance of inclusivity in product design, demonstrating how multidisciplinary teams can work together to create solutions that address specific user needs. Through this initiative, the team contributed to making the kitchen a more welcoming and functional space for everyone.
Immersive User Research
The team employed a modified field study to understand the perspectives of visually impaired home cooks. Due to an inability to connect with research participants, the team immersed themselves in the experience of a visually impaired home cook and collaboratively cooked a meal without vision.
Ideation
Blue Sky Ideation
Collaborative decision making was a key part to the team’s success. As part of the creative process, the team used the Blue Sky Ideation method to diverge on opportunities and narrowed down the ideas through several rounds of dot voting.
Please click through the images on the right (or below on mobile) to view the ideation process.
As the team narrowed down their ideas, additional groupings formed as the ideas were categorized by theme and function.
As the final ideas were evaluated, two ideas stood out: a shape shifting pan which would reduce the need to identify multiple pots in the kitchen and textured spice bottles which would assign textures based on a spice’s characteristics.
The team settled on advancing the textured spice bottle concept as it aligned more closely with the challenges seen during the immersive field study.
Blue Sky-1Blue Sky-2Blue Sky-3Blue Sky-4
Prototyping
While a complete, working product was not the goal of this research, the team was tasked with creating three prototypes that explored the desirability, viability and feasibility. As a cross-disciplinary team, each team member supported this work based on their expertise.
To compliment the product, the team identified a unique selling opportunity to complete the service design component. To alleviate any potential shopping burden for home cooks with visual impairments, these products would be sold via a highly skilled phone sales team. The phone-based interactions help reduce barriers visually impaired customers may have with alternative purchasing methods. Customers can order, refill, and modify their order and subscription via these phone calls.
Looks Like (Desirability) Spice Bottle Design Sells Like (Viability)