03. Ideation
Personas
To understand who we are designing for, we created 3 fictional characters to represent our potential users and generated personas for them based on the research data.
Empathy Maps
Then, we wanted to understand how these 3 potential users feel about our product. We make 3 empathy maps that list their attitudes and behaviors in response to some postural challenges.
Design Requirements
Based on the personas and empathy maps, we defined 5 design requirements that we would frequently look back into when prototyping the product.
01.
Encourage users to stretch to relieve pain.
02.
Educated users about good posture for work.
03.
Help users to adjust their sitting posture.
04.
Remind users to take a break in between work.
05.
Provide advice on how to use furniture.
Design Concepts
We ideated 2 rivalry design solutions that address the 5design requirements from different aspects and invited users to evaluate these two design concepts.
Posture Optimization App (left) is a mobile-based application integrating AR technology to help optimize sitting posture. Users can use phone cameras to scan a chair, and based on their input data, the system provides personalized instructions on how to sit on it.
Posture Reminder (right) is a desktop application with a screen accessory, consisted of both digital and physical forms. The computer camera is activated to track user posture, and the system can read the data and remind users to sit properly and take work breaks.

Concept Testing
We conducted a 60-minutes testing session with 4 potential users to evaluate the 2 design concepts. We presented the design to the users and asked 15 follow-up questions about their thoughts and reactions. Then, we summarized the feedback and turned it into a chart to compare these two design concepts and evaluate whether they meet the listed design solutions.

Overall, users expressed a positive attitude toward both design concepts. However, they found Posture Reminder more useful, because they believe the use cases of Posture Optimization App are limited to acquiring anew chair, which is not a frequent event for them. Further, based on their feedback, Posture Reminder does a better job of fulfilling the 5 design requirements. Therefore, we decided to move on with Posture Reminder and turned the latter design concept into a wireframe.