Portolio of David Elkan-Gonzalez
In order to visualize our designs we built various prototypes. This prototype is built mainly from foam and demonstrates how a surfer might attached a WILD device to their surfboard.
In order to better understand our user group we built multiple personas. This persona describes Larry the Lifestyler, who has shaped his life around his one true love: surfing.
By studying our user group, we learned that opening the night to winter surfers would make a huge impact to their lives. To this end we proposed a wave illumination device, which would allow winter surfers to safely catch waves at night without disturbing others or requiring infrastructure change.
User Oriented Design
Team Size: 5
Project Duration: 14 weeks
Year Completed: Sophomore
Key Skills: Design, User Research, User Interviews, Paper Prototyping
For a course entitled User Oriented Collaborative Design, I and my 4 teammates were assigned a particular user group to research. Our semester-long project had one goal: come up with an idea to improve the lives of our user group. While our idea needed to be technically possible, it did have to feasible in the immediate future, nor did we need concern ourselves with cost or marketability. Instead we were aiming for impact, for an idea that would make the most difference to our user group.
Let me tell you about winter surfers. It turns out due to some quirk of oceanographics that the best surfing conditions in Boston occur in the winter. This is notably the time of year where the ground in Boston is generally covered in snow and ocean temperatures can drop under 40 Fahrenheit. To your average sane person these would be clear indicators to stay out off the beaches, but not so for winter surfers. They don their wetsuits, boots, and hoods, and brave the freezing temperatures to catch the best waves boston has to offer.
Our investigation started by learning just what makes these men and women tick. We arranged interviews and travelled to beaches to watch them in action. We built complex personas underlining the needs and values of our users. Then we moved on to ideation and codesigns. Codesigns are a lot of fun, and often involve having your users try out and critique extremely rough prototypes of your ideas. These sessions help refine and develop ideas through the direct insight or our users.
So now the answer to the big question. What could make the most difference to these surfers? At first we assumed it would have to do with warmth, perhap some sort of heated wetsuit or a heated changing booth to warm them up quickly after exiting the water?
We flirted with dozens of such ideas but tossed them all out. It's true that winter surfers freeze their butts off, that their fingers go numb and their teeth chatter, but this is a badge of their trade. They expect it, they accept it, and they bear it with pride. Only the toughest surfers make it in the winter. What we came up with instead was a way to open up the night to surfing. We learned that one of the biggest challenges for surfers in general is light, a resource that is doubly lacking in the winter. Early sunsets in winter often mean some of the best conditions are very difficult to surf, a serious problem if you're a winter surfer. Our proposal, dubbed the Wave Illumination Device, or WILD, is an immersible high powered projector that surfers can drop in their favourite surf spot to illuminate the waves from below. This provides a dramatic effect and opens the night for surfers, while limiting light pollution for beachside houses. The device would attach to the underside of the board to be carried out and deployed, and would float to the surface by inflating an air sac for recovery.