Forced to Design a Wallet in 90 Minutes ☹️ #DES100

The Challenge:

Run through an entire design process in 90 minutes producing the ideal wallet for your client.

To break that down, we had to design a useful and meaningful wallet for someone else in the class. This wasn’t actually as scary as it sounds. We went step by step focussing on human-centred design and got to interview clients, brainstorm rapidly and finally put our design to the test. Human-centred design focuses on analysing the problem, “analyze the problem you are solving, then generate ideas, then test those ideas with the people who have the problem you are solving… The design one arrives at will be a better solution than if a designer just uses the pre-existing knowledge in their head.” (Ko) At first, when our teachers told us what we were going to be doing for the next 90 minutes, I along with the rest of DES100 began to panic. I had never designed anything for anyone let alone do it in the space of 90 minutes...

Step 1. Gain Empathy

Interview your client, find out their interests, fashion sense and most importantly what purpose does their wallet hold. My client, I’ll call her Sally, was fantastic. She was clear in what her wallet needed to look like and hold. Sally’s wallet actually had to be a purse she could wear crossbody or as a handbag and only carry the essentials (phone, card, lip balm). Classic, versatile and go with every outfit fitting her chic aesthetic. If I did this again, I would spend more time listening and not interrupt as I felt I cut Sally off sometimes when I could’ve gained valuable information “an interview isn’t a conversation. Hold back, don’t finish their sentences, let them explain themselves.” (Cooper-Wright, 2015)

Step 2. Take a Stand

We had 6 minutes to interpret our clients goals and find insight into their life and motivations. As Sally didn’t carry many sentimental items and valued durability and versatility, I made an insight that Sally may be a minimalist. From there we take a stand, “Sally needs a way to carry necessary items but it needs to be versatile and durable for different occasions and fit a classic aesthetic.” Once I had this, onto the drawing.

First Designs

Step 3. Ideate

Now we had to generate multiple ideas and designs of our wallets, 5 minutes to come up with 5 different designs. Going along with my findings I tried to come up with crossbody bags that had a classic shape and fit to a black and white theme. The critiques we got afterwards were important to recognise where we could improve on and see a different perspective, “the purpose of a prototype is to gain knowledge.” (Ko)

First Designs

Step 4. Making the dreaded thing

We had designed our wallets, next we had to make them. Out of paper. And tape. In 10 minutes. We were given cardstock, sellotape, a glue stick and pipe cleaners to bring our design to life. The fear came back, the voices got louder as we were yelling for the scissors. While this was a stressful time it was also a lot of fun. I managed to produce a slightly wonky, big, bluer version of what I had wanted. It wasn’t perfect, but that’s what prototypes are for, “You don't make a prototype in the hopes that you'll turn it into the final implemented solution.”(Ko) I was proud of what I had managed to accomplish in that 90 minutes. And what had I managed to accomplish? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Final Design