In one of my design lectures we were tasked with interviewing someone in order to find out more about them.
This was the first step into designing something that would make their life better.
We focused on the wallet. I paired up with my friend Miya, who I knew little about based on our short time of uni friendship.
From interviewing about her wallet I found out valuable things that would later help me in designing a new wallet for her. She didn’t like having to swing her bag around every time she wanted to pay for something, and her wallet had no compartments to it. However, instead of letting it hinder her, she developed her own filing system in which she grouped certain cards together to make finding them easier. This did nothing for coins though, which floated around and damaged cards with chips in them.
Next, we interviewed about our partner’s lives based on the contents of their wallet. I found out that Miya enjoys cute things - specifically Japanese culture. She has a lot of sentimental cards that she keeps with her other frequently used ones. Cards such as a business card given to her by a Japanese man at her work.
I sketched out 5 different prototype designs. Many featured some sort of bag attachment in order to fix her issue of swinging her bag around. I used to have this problem myself, so I was passionate about fixing it. I also ensured that all the prototypes presented were some level of ‘Japanese-cute’.
The prototype she liked best was a cat themed bag-strap attachment. This wallet would come in a pair - one for each strap and one for each card theme. Sentimental and functional. She would be able to lean forward to use the contact-less function of cards such as AT hop cards and Eftpos cards. There would also be a small pouch on the back for coins.
I set about prototyping it out of card and pipe-cleaners. I created a fold-able box plan drawn around the shape of one of my own cards. This would ensure that it was big enough. I used the pipe cleaners so that it would be attachable to the bag. It came out great! Miya loved it and said she would use it in her day-to-day life. It fit up to 8 cards and attached well to her bag. I unfortunately couldn’t replicate the ‘lip’ on the bottom of the prototype to prevent it from slipping down the bag strap.
