IDEO Workshop

> Who is your product made for?

For those who have lost, and those who have found what others have lost, our product was meant to facilitate a safe and secure communication between the two parties.

> What’s the existing problem? What’s the need of the user?

People often lose their personal possessions and have difficulty retrieving them, or anxiety around taking the steps to seek them out due to communicating with strangers. Especially if the possession is considered to be rather valuable within society, people can be fished into unsafe situations.

> How does your design solve for it?

Our design contains two separate portals: one for those who have lost an item, and one for those who have found an item. The product itself would then notify both sides of the party if it believes a potential match has been found. Further verification would then occur to mitigate the risk of a false match, and only after this rigorous (but friendly) process would the two parties then be introduced to one another in a chat.

> Walk us through the design flow.

There are two paths that users can take — a path for finding something lost, and a path for returning something lost. The submissions on both ends aggregate to respective community boards/listings, adding to the grander community/cozy feel of the app. The verification process would be gamified through matching exercises for the potentially lost item, and if all is sound so far the two parties come together to converse. The purpose of the app is to facilitate a match between item-owner and item-founder, and make the experience much less nerve-wracking and more fulfilling for both sides.

> How do you want users to feel when they use your product?

We wanted users to feel like they are at home, or a part of a larger community that is compassionate. It can be stressful to lose something, and it can be fulfilling to do good, so to minimize the stress and maximize on the fulfillment would be the product’s goal.

One thought on “IDEO Workshop”

  1. Love that you guys turned an ‘inconvenient’ experience into a game-like experience. And there’s a matching algorithm behind the app!

    However, AI is something that either make it or break it. The next design challenge is about finding the balance between machine- and user-enabled matching, and still make it fun to use. i.e., can the loser types in 3 keyword that describes the item, and the finder can review and tell them if they got it right. Like a guessing game.

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