DESIGN ALTERNATIVES

: design evaluation and selection

Team TBD (Take Beyond Depression)
Hongmin Kim, Hyunkyung Kim, Gaeul Han
School of Design and Human Engineering, UNIST
1. Introduction
Before the ideation, formative study was conducted with the subject focusing on
depression: why and when people become depressed, how and what people take effort to
reduce the feeling of depression. To figure out and answer to the research questions,
expert interview, focus group interview and survey was taken. Therefore, several design
requirements are derived as conclusion and from the conclusion following ideas are
generated. In this paper, design alternatives are evaluated in certain criteria, and then
one idea is selected in conclusion part.

2. Design Alternatives
Following design alternatives are derived from the conclusion of formative studies. Those
ideas are described with those components: background and motivation, problem going
to solve, target user, and expected result.
1) CHOCOLATE PROJECT: Fortune Choco Vending machine
A chocolate machine installed in a certain location prints touching message. Users can
enter some information, for instance, his or her feeling, emotion or the days weather.
Then, the machine prints out proper message on the chocolate. The message came from
anonymous people on the web system and those people who sent the message could
have chocolate as reward. Consequently, people in a busy and hard time those days
could have a little happy time with chocolate and special message.

Picture 1. Description of CHOCOLATE PROJECT

Background and motivation Sweets can make people feel better and people want the
feeling that they are cared, concerned and not alone-needs touching words or saying.
Therefore, if chocolate itself has a touching message, it could give people a bit of
happiness.
Problem People in those days are struggling with busy and hard times. For those people,
the project aims to reduce their stress and depression by chocolates and messages.
Target user People who are depressed and stressful but no time to resolve them are the
target users. At the same time, the machine could be installed in a company building or
school, a people in their workplaces could be more specific target.
Expected result Users who got the special chocolate feel better in their stressful times.
They regularly use the machine and send messages to the people who are struggling
with same time.

2) JUST DRIVE: navigation without destination

A device installed in a car, navigates the routes depending on a users feeling and time
to drive. The navigation does not navigating for a certain destination but just the route to
drive. This aims to users feel better and reduce stress by driving. Further, the routes can
be shared and recommended by other users.

Picture 2. Description of JUST DRIVE

Background and motivation Driving makes people feel better. Some people enjoy
driving itself, not for reaching certain destination. However, it is hard to find information
routes to drive.
Problem The device help users to resolve depressed and negative feeling. Users do not
need to hesitate wehre to drive and they can just enjoy directly without any thinking.
Target user People who want to drive to refresh but dont know where.
Expected result New experience of fun driving.
3) HAPPIER LIFE: depression management system
This smartphone application lets depressed people to know what to do in that time to
manage their lives. It is because depressed people cannot manage their lives feeling
burden even from simple tasks in their lives. Therefore, this system should alarm detailed
tasks in proper time with systemic rewards. Gamification could be applied to the system.

Picture 3. Description of HAPPIER LIFE

Background and motivation Depressed people cannot manage their lives feeling
burden even from simple tasks in their lives. Reward could be one of the solution to lead
them to the normal lives.
Problem As like the background, depressed people have significant problem, it is hard to
be managed by people around for detailed tasks.
Target user People in light depression
Expected result People who cannot manage their lives can be helped, with application
like psychological clutches.

3. Evaluation
To select idea for the project this semester, each alternative are evaluated with those
criteria: satisfaction, feasibility, significance, and interest. Following table is evaluation of
each alternative and below the table is the description of evaluation.

Satisfaction

Feasibility

Significanc
e

Interest

CHOCOLATE PROJECT

Medium

Medium

High

High

JUST DRIVE

Low

Medium

Medium

Medium

HAPPIER LIFE

Medium

High

Low

Low

Table1. Evaluation of alternatives

1) CHOCOLATE PROJECT: Fortune Choco Vending machine

CHOCOLATE PROJECT satisfies the formative study conclusion in medium (satisfaction
medium), not that much but part of it. In terms of feasibility, constructing system
structure should be concerned a bit more but not that impossible (high feasibility). This
idea could have significant social impact (high significance) and not only teammates,
but classmates and professor thought the idea is interesting (high interest).
2) JUST DRIVE: navigation without destination
JUST DRIVE is rarely reflected the research (satisfaction low). This system itself has
expected system but some social problem are expected to be occurred by this system
(Medium feasibility). However, for the target users, this idea seems to have somewhat
significance (medium significance) and interest (medium interest)
3) HAPPIER LIFE: depression management system
HAPPIER LIFE satisfies expert interview about people in depression (satisfaction
medium), and high feasibility-easy to construct the system (feasibility high). However,
significance is lower than the other ideas because it is personal and the effect of this
system could not be expected in this phase (low significance). At the same time, the
idea itself is too simple and one-to-one matched, interest of this idea is low (interest
low).

4. Conclusion
As a conclusion of this paper, the first idea, CHOCOLATE PROJECT, is selected getting
highest point based onto the criteria compared to other ideas. As further plan, those
should be concerned:

Message system: where the message came from and who send and get the
message, and which reward and motivations suggested to users

Physical problem: where and how to print the message onto the chocolate

Financial system: whether people buy the chocolate or how to circulate the
system financially

APPENDIX: Initial Sketches