The Live Well team conducted five in-home interviews with consumers recruited through UCats, the University of Cincinnati’s athletic/alumni association. During these interviews, two students met with a consumer in their home to observe their daily life and how they incorporate UC spirit.
‍
After reviewing the insights from these interviews, the team found a spectrum of consumers and translated those into different personas with different lifestyle needs and design requirements.  From these personas they created three different product directions to narrow down their focus when ideating.
‍
To organize their thoughts, the team created a mind-map to collect quotes and insights from consumers. This map helped them develop and discover trends among tastes and needs of varying people.

Along with the representatives from Duchossois, the team created a product map called the soul/heart/body that determined the most important aspects of the product. This helped them determine where to start in the design process.
‍
After presenting initial personas to Duchossois, discussion led to a new persona. This persona focuses on the two consumer types at the “super fan” end of the spectrum. The combination of these two personas allows the product to appeal to consumers that love their school and are very open about it and also to those consumers that love their school but keep their love more hidden.  The focus of the chime is also centered around music, both on quality and on breadth of a music “portfolio”.

After proposing sounds to consumers, the team received feedback regarding types of sounds. What was learned is that the sounds of the chime need to adapt to the changing lives and activities of the user and their family. This means that a large “portfolio” of sounds consumers can choose from is neccesary.  The sounds are also thought to change as the year goes on, taking a cyclical pattern.  

After compiling insights from consumers and Duchossois, the industrial design team began the initial sketching phase for the chime unit.

These concepts were created from initial sketches and were refined enough to show consumers. These concepts were created to receive insight on aesthetics and product functions.

After presenting initial and feedback-driven ideation to Duchossois and reporting consumer feedback, the team could finally determine a final aesthetic for the product. Now aided by input from Duchossois, the industrial design team worked together to decide on four concepts that shared the same features but had differing styles. The main features were pairing with SkinIt, a USB/SD converter, and the ability to work on a table or mounted on a wall.  

To test potential sounds and receive feedback on length of time and genre, the team played seven sounds to participants in a focus group and used that feedback to determine final sounds to be included in the chime.

To begin the web interface process, the team created a list of all the tasks that would need to be completed through the website. After creating this list, each step necessary to complete the task was listed and organized into a flow chart and a test website was created and shown to consumers.