Releaf
Releaf is a pair of headphones that also acts as personal speakers when laid on one's shoulders. This was a demand-pull product innovation in which a problem was first identified and verified. Many iterations has been made in the process, along with interviews, questionnaire and user testing.
Idea Origin
The design started from a personal problem: I own a pair of good quality Sony headphones (the MDR-1A), and I bring it with me all the time. I enjoy music and audio books but at the same time, I also enjoy biking. But for one reason, I had to change my commuting method completely to walking: I can’t listen to music while I bike.
There are two main reasons for this. First, my headphone simply isn’t compatible with bike helmets. I would have to change to lower quality in-ear earphones if I wanted to use them. Secondly, biking is already one of the most dangerous ways to commute, I can’t increase that further by blocking my hearing from environmental sounds. Of course, at this point this might be a problem only to me, so my first step was to evaluate its scale. The results were very surprising.
Key First-hand Research Findings
I carried out an interactive questionnaire which asks questions based on the user’s answers like actual interviews. This 15-minute-long questionnaire was filled out by 33 common bikers, mainly focusing on biker’s use of helmets and audio. Here are some key findings:
Yes
Yes
No
The majority 43% of people are giving up safety for audio experience, following up 29% of people give up audio experience for slightly improved safety (one side can hear) and the audiophiles (14%) clearly gave up on helmets and all surrounding sounds, begging for an accident.
There were further findings on navigation method for bikers:
All who don't listen to navigating apps
Over half of the people actually pull over to check their phone. Moreover, when asked why they don’t use audio navigation about half of the users again indicated their concern on safety or not having suitable audio devices.
Brainstorming for a Solution
With the initial first-hand and second-hand research, I formulated a few possible design solutions to have a more in-depth conversation with 30 bikers. I tried to be critical and realistic with my solutions and not to pitch them with too much passion. The results were very diverse and helpful as summarized below:
Summary of User Discussion
Yes, but only if...
No. because...
It was very clear that the biggest barrier to the consumer was cost. Interviewees were clear that they would not purchase a helmet that was more expensive than the normal ones for two main reasons:
1. They can only be used during biking and would be considered (psychologically) as a part of their biking allowance.
2. Even though only 9/33 of questionnaire participants who often bike have ever impacted their helmet, they feel like helmets are made to break and this reduces their willingness to buy expensive helmets.
The average max price they would pay for a helmet is only 25 pounds, clearly not enough for the solar roof, back lights and a good quality speaker on the side. I went back to the drawing board.
Brainstorming for a Solution II
This time, i went for something with a long-term use case. This justifies for a higher price as it starts to occupy consumer's allowance for audio devices instead of biking equipments. It can be made with better sound quality and more precise unidirectional loudspeakers as users are not expecting to break these. The designs also solves problems like not knowing where to leave one's expensive electronic bike helmets.
Design 5 was chosen for the final design as it solved the most problems and demonstrated the highest amount of use-cases. This design keeps all the use cases of a bluetooth, noise-cancelling headphone but adds specific scenarios like biking, being at home with kids etc. Furthermore, it can also provide the sense of relief after prolonged headphone usage that every headphone user understands (users pull the two earcups slightly away from their head to stop the clamping force from hurting them after leaving headphones on for hours.