Well, we asked for some snow donations on Twitter and they came in in abundance! One day, there was not even a hint of frost and the next, we were ankle-deep in snow, working from home, but still managing to inject some Bunnyfoot fun into the day with a “usability snowman” competition across our UK offices (I hope Hong Kong don’t feel too left out!).
2 hours, some snow and a little imagination produced an outright winner from Oxford’s Usability Consultant, Nick Antram. Here’s his entry…
Here is an attempt at a usable snowman. We talked to local snowmen users and asked them what they really wanted out of their snowmen and the overwhelming response of the 2 people we spoke to was that snowmen needed to be not only big fat piles of snow that were funny to look at, but useful too!
Popular suggestions were:
- To have a flashing light on the top so users could easily see the snowman in a snowstorm
- Have a comfy seat to allow users to have a nice sit down after struggling through the snow
- To have a nice cuppa tea (when is this not a popular suggestion?)
So we sketched some ideas (well ok, just one)…
Did some anthropometric analysis and fitting trials:
Which gave us the 95th percentile of users.
Then we user tested it thoroughly in blizzard-like conditions **
And this is the result…
The Snowmatic Ergsnowchair!
With some final user testing, we just knew it was perfect.
* Ergonomic principles may not have been used
** May not have been user tested thoroughly
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