Frozello, A Three Day IDEO Design Methods Challenge
This project was completed during the Fall Semester of the MADE Program at Brown and RISD, taught by RISD professor, Andy Law, and Ashley Reeves from IDEO.
Made in collaboration with Raghav Aggarwal and Isabel Arango.
Day 1: Up until this point, as a class, we were crafting personas and studying the IDEO user-oriented design methods. This challenge was presented to us as a sprint in applying what we learned about user research in the context of a “yogurt experience”.
We began by, first, eating yogurt and reflecting on what already exists. Having come from three different backgrounds, we compared how yogurt was used in different cultures. For example, Raghav brought up how yogurt was used in Indian weddings and spread on the faces of the bride and groom. However, in Columbia, Isabel shared how her grandmother makes her own yogurt and doesn’t buy from the store.
After some brainstorming, we decided to each interview people regarding their yogurt habits and specifically their opinion on frozen yogurt. The three of us found that frozen yogurt has a different connotation than traditional yogurt and we were curious as to why.
DAY 2: We began this day by developing a research plan consisting of User Interviews, researching existing precedent and potential problem spaces, and then embodied prototyping/desk research
Thanks to Raghav’s experience with researching businesses, we were able to synthesize some of the existing pain points with the frozen yogurt experience and orient our questions in our interviews to indirectly address said points.
This day we each conducted hour long qualitative interviews with participants aging from 20–26, having determined that age group as our target age group.
From our interviews, we were able to pull out to key leading insights:
Convenience is a huge factor when determining where to eat and frozen yogurt is noticeably more popular than traditional yogurt.
Due to the time constraint we weren’t able to conduct any more interviews, thus we decided to use these key insights as our driving prompts for the rest of the experience proposal.
Day 3: We took this day to then develop a design concept.
Knowing that our target user, college students 18–24 years old, valued convenience when determining where to eat, we looked at existing ways that people could obtain food quickly. We researched everything from highly involved convenience oriented food experiences, such as the Sprinkles Cupcake ATM to vending machines and fast-food drive-thrus.
We then returned to our participants and asked them specifically about why they prefer frozen yogurt. There was an overwhelming response that the most valued characteristic of frozen yogurt is the customization aspect of it.
Another factor we learned about and considered was how the pandemic affected how people interact with eating food in public spaces. We asked ourselves, “would people want to go to a yogurt shop and touch the handles everybody else has touched?”
How can we preserve the customization selling factor of frozen yogurt, while being cognizant of experience, convenience, and pandemic friendly?
We took the day co-creating with each other drawing on our research insights to develop a new yogurt experience we named, Frozello. We learned that when you combine yogurt and jello, you get a tasty dessert that home-chefs have been making that hold their shape longer than traditional frozen yogurt.
What if you could customize your own frozen yogurt popsicle by simply selecting your flavors and assembling yourself. This “stab and go” model directly addresses the facets of the frozen yogurt experience that our participants valued as well as providing a convenient and enjoyable experience.
Day 3: Ok we have a concept, how do we communicate this?
Well since this design challenge really only provided us three days to get everything done, we felt some pressure to visually communicate our idea in the clearest way possible. We wanted to take our users through the journey of interacting with Frozello and provide them a relatable scenario.
As for form, we chose this shape with the grooved surfaces like this so each Frozello flavor wouldn’t spin around on the stick and increase the surface area in contact with each flavor. We quickly 3D printed a mold and tried to freeze some of the yogurt ourselves as a roof of concept to share with our participants to get feedback on.
The Machine: With existing frozen yogurt machines, they are bulky and expensive to maintain. Understanding this, we thought — perhaps if we approached frozen yogurt from the perspective of consumer yogurt companies looking for physical storefronts to promote their product. Instead of spending money on a storefront solely dedicated to yogurt, yogurt companies could partner with local businesses and essentially “rent” space from them to put their Frozello machine in stores.
As you can see, the machine can be wall mounted and vary in number of flavors. In encouraging partnerships with other businesses, yogurt companies widen their demographic and gain exposure to more people.
To further the plausibility of our idea, we also made a brand guideline for Frozello.
Day 4: The Presentation
We prepared all these assets to share our concept the rest of the cohort in the form of a 10 minute presentation. One thing, we definitely did well under the time constraints was visually communicate our idea to the best of our ability at the time.
What we can improve on for next time is try to get more feedback and research more consistently throughout the designing process. Validate our insights and directions with more people and more often. Because we only spoke to 9 people, as clear as our concept was, inevitably it seemed like we lacked credibility.
Conclusion:
All in all, I think we were each surprised with what we were able to accomplish in a four day time frame. Everything from prototyping to visually communicating, to reaching into our networks and conducting interviews. This IDEO challenge was certainly an exercise in working with a diverse team and creating something from it. The common “differences and omissions” in our group made us stronger and we bounced off each other’s energy. We now know for future projects what it takes to effectively communicate, problem solve under a time constraint, and how to earn credibility when validating/invalidating our ideas.
