Ruchita Lodha || Jamie Monville || Gina Herakovic || Kaavya Samu

Problem Definition

You’re at a busy coffee shop by yourself and you’ve somehow managed to score one of the best seats in the shop. You have a table next to an electrical outlet so you can plug in and spread out. It’s go-time and you’re ready to commence studying.

.. But suddenly the caffeine hits and panic starts to creep in..

You have to go to the washroom but you don’t have a trusted companion that can watch your belongings while you’re away. You have three options to choose from:

• Leave your stuff unattended while you run to the washroom, but this poses a major risk for theft because nobody is keeping an eye on it.
• You could ask a stranger sitting nearby but there is no guarantee that they will faithfully watch over it.
• Your third and final option is to pack everything up and take it with you but then you’ll lose your coveted seat and table.

This type of experience is all too common for students and young, working professionals, especially in the age of shared workspaces. While we are mainly focused on college students of any level as our audience, we also understand that a variety of people go to coffee shops simply to try and get some work done. The environments we aim to augment are spaces that are used for productivity and focus such as coffee shops, libraries, shared working spaces, and so on.

Motivation

Our primary motivation towards this problem was our own experiences as students working and studying at the university and being constantly concerned about securing our valuables. To understand the audience and this problem better, we dived into our user research process.

🧐 Observations 🤔 Interviews