Iterative Design

If adjunct Professor Kiersten Nash's description of the studio at Parsons sounds modest - "a white box filled with curious minds" - it's an easy setting in which to imagine the percolating atmosphere of active discussion, research, prototyping and presentations during sessions of "creative collaboration fueled by uncertainty."

※1 Iterative Design - Iterative design is a process of designing a product in which the product is tested and evaluated repeatedly to eliminate usability.

Any design project that seeks to innovate or improve is likely to involve attempts to invent, rethink, repurpose and refine technologies, and this project is no exception. As our teams advanced into the development phase, all forms of technologies were considered, vetted and tested for viability, conductivity, efficiency and more.

Limitation Brings New Possibilities

In exploring wellness technology, each team has chosen different technology...

• Team Halcyon use virtual reality (VR) for relaxation, massage, and anxiety relief.

• Team Rebeat, pursuing better ways to monitor blood pressure, employed 3D printing and PPG (photopethysmography) - a light-based technology used to monitor blood flow.

• Team Göbie did design a new app for their social wellness device, they found that most of their engineering involved the reimagining of existing technology to serve their needs.

Student testing his prototype

As our teams learned, multiple rounds of prototyping and testing can reveal unexpected opportunities. Team Halcyon's foray into VR became impractical in its initial form as an all-day wearable, but its portability was key to refining the product as a solution for providing relief in moments of high anxiety.

Team Halcyon's VR idea for relaxation purpose

But where one team's solution was zooming in on a tighter focus, another was pulling back to make room for more use cases than initially expected. The original intended audience for Team SLEEPWISE sleep-focused wearable was business travelers, but their modular design turned out to be useful to a much broader class of sleepers.

Team SLEEPWISE wearable monitors user sleep quality and syncs with IoT device

Each team learned lessons during their design process that proved invaluable in setting up for their final presentations, which resoundingly exceeded our expectations. Continue reading to Volume 5 to see the presentations in detail.