My team and I were tasked to design a product aimed to solve a problem within the renewable battery storage industry. Over the course of the semester, we were able to execute a product concept in four main phases:
Identify, Understand, Conceptualize, Realize.
tldr; Reflection + Moving Forward
Coming into this class, I wasn't sure of what to expect but I had ideas in mind that I assumed to be able to execute right from the first phase. What I've realized through extensive user research, competitor analyses, ideation, and prototyping was the fact that the design process is rarely linear, if ever. This project has taught me to utilize my resources and to be openminded of flaws in my usual ways of thinking. I was able to learn various design methods and applied them, which was so fulfilling to experience as a designer. With these aspects in mind, I look forward to my design journey ahead.
To learn more about this project and our in-depth design journey, continue below.
Project Motivation
Throughout the duration of the course, the team learned that the renewable energy battery storage market is already very saturated which made finding product opportunity gaps in the market and thus a viable final product very challenging. Much of the opportunity in the market is related to improvements upon the battery storage and solar panel technology itself which the team did not have the financial and intangible resources to innovate in this area during the course. Also, many opportunities in the market are related to large scale infrastructure, problems that can only be solved with the resources of a large scale company. Overall, the team remained persistent in the exploration of knowledge and moving through the design process to ideate the best opportunity and product in this saturated space. Despite having to revisit the design phases after coming so far in one solution, it was no set back as it helped us reach our final, most efficient product.
Phase 1: Identify
Problem Statement: Results of global warming suggest that the peak of the fossil fuel industry has passed and that renewable energy will increase in prominence in the near future. However, common forms of renewable energy such as solar are intermittent in nature due to their reliance on external factors. Thus, solutions to harness renewable energy during peak production and store this energy in the form of batteries will greatly increase their usability. This project aims to design a product that will be able to use this stored energy to provide power without reliance on the electrical grid, reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
SET Factors Related to Battery Storage for Renewables
Phase 2: Understand
User Research Methods
Multiple user research methods were utilized while determining and selecting POGs. First, the team conducted user observation around the Berkeley campus; specifically, the direct observation method was selected as it allowed us to get an unbiased understanding of how consumers are using their devices. We looked to see how students use their devices at home. This allowed us to understand how consumers are using and charging their devices at home and confirm the original belief that renewable battery storage is not currently used by most consumers. We walked around the Berkeley campus to understand how consumers use their devices when on the go. This allowed us to see that many students study outdoors with no connection to an outlet and bring a portable charger with them. Or they tend to gather at outside areas where there are outlets such as Cafe Strada. Pictures taken to document these behaviors can be found to the right.
The other method of user research selected was 1:1 interviews as the team wanted to get user insights and identify opportunity spaces related to battery technology. A total of 12 participants were interviewed with 10 being students and 2 being adults with careers in the energy sector. From these conversations, we were able to conclude that users have issues with charging their devices when on the go and would like to have a renewable energy storage source as long as it is lightweight, portable, and relatively inexpensive.
3 1:1 expert interviews were conducted with Dr. Tarek Zhodi (UC Berkeley Professor), Nikhil Pawar (Mechanical Engineer for Tesla Powerwall), and Connor Haley (Previous Tesla Supercharger Network Planning & Pricing Employee). Major takeaways from these conversations are shown to the right.
Product Opportunity Gap (POG) Generation: After exploring the battery storage for renewables problem space, the team generated fifty initial statements in total. These product opportunities were broad in scope and were narrowed down using the Affinity method approach. The team transferred all POG statements onto “sticky notes'' in Mural (interactive online white board) and moved them around to categorize the POGs into subgroups.
Product Opportunity Gap (POG) Selection: Once categorized, the POGs were eliminated based on similarity to other POG statements, complexity or broadness of the scope, and relevance of the statement to the problem statement. Then, to a weighted matrix to filter down the top ten statements into the final POG statement.
Weighted Matrix for the Top 10 Product Opportunity Gaps.
Weighted Matrix for the Top 5 Product Opportunity Gaps.
Initial Final Product Opportunity Gap (POG):
Although the team pivoted through each design phase of the semester, the original final POG selected was as follows:
“Enhance portable electronic devices for maximum usage efficiency through providing consumers with a lightweight, portable method of harvesting and storing solar power.”
Phase 2 Revised POG: Based on the competitor analysis conducted in Phase 2, the team made a unanimous decision to refine the final POG statement from Phase 1 as the team's product would have many similar competitors and thus compete in a saturated market. The team revisited the original list of 50 POG statements to find any unexplored problem spaces. The team also considered the insights from SME interviewees who mentioned that solar energy has unexplored potential in more remote applications. Considering the aforementioned insights, the team crafted the following new POG:
“Enhance access to renewable energy in remote areas with weak electrical infrastructure for the purpose of device charging to improve connectivity by providing consumers with a lightweight and portable method of harvesting and storing solar power.”
Phase 3 Revised POG: During the product ideation conducted in Phase 3, the team ideated product ideas that were too broad which was a result of having broad POG. Thus, the team brainstormed how to narrow the POG space based on insights from past user research. Per advice from expert interviewees, the team decided to focus on renewable energy applications in remote water areas. The team recreated 63 product ideas in this problem space based around the following revised POG:
“Enhance access to renewable energy for recreational boaters located in remote areas for the purpose of device charging to improve connectivity by providing consumers with a lightweight and portable method of harvesting and storing solar power.”
Phase 4 Revised POG: From Phase 3 presentation feedback, the team concluded that a product designed for recreational winter sports users would be more impactful, as snow reflects light. The team conducted further user research and landed on the final POG below:
“Enhance access to renewable energy during recreational snow activities in remote areas for the purpose of device charging to improve connectivity by providing consumers with a lightweight and portable method of harvesting and storing solar power.”
Phase 3: Conceptualize
Personas: After this research was conducted, the team synthesized insights into personas of fictional characters that represent a user type that would use our winter sports product in a similar way. Here are the profiles I created.
Competitors and VOA
Solar Device Charging Battery Competitors and VOA: After completing the original user research, the team explored the solar energy market and chose the top three competitors that aligned with the original POG related to solar device charging batteries. Subsequently, a value opportunity analysis (VOA) was conducted for these 3 competitors, making reference to the 7 value opportunity (VO) attributes and the corresponding sub-attributes. Each sub-attribute was rated as low, medium, or high for the 3 competitors. Based on the sub-attribute ratings of our competitors as well as our user research, the team made a decision regarding the VO attributes to focus on for the opportunity space.
Here are the Value Opportunity Analysis charts I created for our team.
Original Positioning: After evaluating the competitor VOA and the user research we were able to gather, the team decided to focus on the Emotion, Identity, and Impact VO attributes.
The team came to this conclusion because the competitor VOA highlighted that this market space lacks products with a strong identity. This means that a gap exists where we can create a product that has a strong impact environmentally by utilizing renewable energy, which can also give the product a strong identity as a stepping stone towards a more green future.
As a product for active skiers and snowboarders, the team also wanted to focus on the emotion VO attribute because a high sense of adventure will draw users to use our product and improve the user experience.
Above are the updated charts after switching gears of product design intent. The competitor chart was recreated by my teammate, David.
Concept Generation
The primary concept generation design method used during this phase was Analogical Reasoning. Since our project was centered around the applications of solar energy, it made sense to identify objects which were exposed to the sun for long periods of time and think about how solar energy could be used to complement or enhance the functions of the objects. Through Analogical Reasoning, we generated concepts such as the “Solar Buoy” and “Solar Watch”. The secondary concept generation design method used was Design Heuristics, where we used some of the 77 different Design Heuristics rules to quickly generate additional concepts. Some of the concepts generated this way were the “Solar Boat Roof Array” and the “Solar-powered Cooking Equipment”. Finally, we used Biomimicry for at least one of the concepts, where we analyzed how nature increases effective surface areas, generating the “Foldable Solar Tree” concept. Additionally, the team performed a round of 4-3-5 brainwriting, where each team member quickly sketched up their top 3 concepts to be passed along to the other team members to quickly improve and enhance one another’s concepts. Some of the concepts enhanced during this session were the “Solar Life Vest” and the “Neck Protecting Solar Hat.”
Concept Selection:
For the concept selection portion of phase 3, the team decided to move forward in three stages: the initial filtering stage, secondary filtering stage, and final filtering stage. The concept positioning chart has the X-axis ranging from low cost to high cost and the Y-axis ranging from low complexity to high complexity.
For the secondary filtering stage, the team reduced the 15 concepts that were left after the initial filtering stage, and narrowed the concepts down further to the top 6. The technique that we used to accomplish this was the dot voting method. Using this method, each team member was allocated 15 dots to distribute across any of the 15 concepts. The criteria for how each member distributed their dots was to vote for the concepts that we felt best represented the POG from phase 2, were most interested in, and were the most feasible to accomplish within the scope of the class. The dot voting distribution can be found to the left.
For the final filtering stage, the team chose a final concept from the top 6 in the previous stage by utilizing the Borda count voting method. In this method, each member ranked the top 6 ideas from best to worst, assigning the best idea 6 points, and the worst idea 1 point, in increments of 1. The Borda Chart above was illustrated and graphed by me.
Phase 4: Realize
Final Concept
The vision we developed for the final concept is a winter jacket with integrated solar panels on the exterior of the jacket. The exterior solar panels will harvest solar energy and charge up an integrated battery in the jacket. The energy stored in the battery can then be used to activate an integrated heating mechanism in the jacket to warm up the jacket wearer or it can be used to charge any portable electronic devices carried by the jacket wearer. It is hoped that the typical bulkiness of winter jackets will ensure that the additions we envision in our final concept do not noticeably hinder the wearing experience of the jacket. With this vision in mind, we set out to create our first prototype after ordering the required materials.
The vision we developed for the final concept is a winter jacket with integrated solar panels on the exterior of the jacket. The exterior solar panels will harvest solar energy and charge up an integrated battery in the jacket. The energy stored in the battery can then be used to activate an integrated heating mechanism in the jacket to warm up the jacket wearer or it can be used to charge any portable electronic devices carried by the jacket wearer. It is hoped that the typical bulkiness of winter jackets will ensure that the additions we envision in our final concept do not noticeably hinder the wearing experience of the jacket. With this vision in mind, we set out to create our first prototype after ordering the required materials.
Future Outlook
Challenges: Throughout the duration of the course, the team learned that the renewable energy battery storage market is already very saturated which made finding product opportunity gaps in the market and thus a viable final product very challenging. Much of the opportunity in the market is related to improvements upon the battery storage and solar panel technology itself which the team did not have the financial and intangible resources to innovate in this area during the course. Also, many opportunities in the market are related to large scale infrastructure, problems that can only be solved with the resources of a large scale company. Overall, the team remained persistent in the exploration of knowledge and moving through the design process to ideate the best opportunity and product in this saturated space.
Design Sacrifices: Due to limited time to work on the project and a lack of funds, a number of design sacrifices had to be made. Firstly, the solar panels are purely cosmetic and do not work at this stage. Secondly, the heating functionality of the jacket has not been incorporated yet. Lastly, the design upgrade suggestions obtained during the prototype user research cannot be performed. Nevertheless, the created prototype is still able to serve as a proof of concept for future development. For the second prototype, the designed pieces were made from 3D-printed plastic instead of the intended soft metal and injection-molded silicon respectively.
Jacobs Showcase final poster.
