Design a door for the visually impaired.

This is quite an interesting and challenging problem I would say because door is such a simple product + I think one of the main issues is that I have fortunately never lived a life of a visually impaired person. But let me ask you few questions so I can make sure I am solving for the correct thing.

I assume that by door we mean any door in the house. Or do we also mean doors at restaurants and such? (upto you).

Ok, I will choose doors in teh house for now just because I think that's under the control of a person who might buy my product (be it a door or any other tech) and the consumer is the buyer so I think it be easier to enter the market that way first. However, maybe depending on solution I design, it may be applicable to other markets as well. (Interviewer: ok)

For me, can we focus on US? I think this matter because in countries like India, doors have olden style latch so product design would be unique.

Interviewer: ok.

Also, it could be tech hardware product or software or even a non-tech product? What's your choice? (Interviewre: upto you).

Ok I think I am likely to make a tech product. And is there a certain type of visually imparied we are thinking of? (No; upto you again).

And also is there a reason we are doing this? I mean, do we have certain data whereby current customers are requesting to help them due to visually impaired family members? Is it ton of data points? Or is it leadership mandate? Is there a reason leadership has asked us to do this? (interviwer: leadership mandate. We don't know why).

Do we already do business selling doors or just windows or other home improvement hardware or is this a new business? (Interviewer: new business).

Ok, so then I take it that we want to be disruptive. And I take it this would be our first product. If you are ok with those assumptions, then I would want to focus on designing a product that can attract customers since I think as a new biz to survive i will need to focus on acquisition.

Interviewer: Sounds great!

Me: As a Lead PM I typicalyl think of who my user is since that helps me think of what might help that user and then I design a solution. I then am faced with trade-offs and challenges and constraints and based on all that I end up prioritizing features on roadmap. I think a similar approach might work well. What do you think?

Interviewer: sure.

Me; When I  think of visually imparied i think the product should address just anyone who is visually impaired but then we also have different age groups. I think kids have a unique requirement but after a certain age no matter how old your requirements are prob the same. Except, I think older people may have some unique needs as well (like you have to consider their deteriorating health, phyiscal weaknes, etc.). I think I would focus on elderly here because everyone other than kids and elderly are generally active and have learnt the doors and such in teh house well and can remember it. They also are accustomed to the challenge and using the doors fine. But elderly have memory issues and physical strength that's reudcing so that might posee more challenges for them. Kids on the other hand, have no patience and are always in a rush and also can't reach handle of the door sometimes to be able to open it. Biut I think focusing on elderly will likely address kids as well + kids learn to be fearful due to disability quite fast and parents of these kids usually have a strong watch on them so I think elderly is the odd man out. Addressing for them wil address for everyone.

Interviewer: ok.

Me: As a visually impaired, do we mean 100% blind? Mostly yes. ok let's go with yes since even if not 100%, assuming 100% will solve for most cases. I tink they encounter troubles such as 1) identifying where handle is 2)not enough strength to turn the handle 3) loss of balance so fear of falling and high risk of falling.

I think all of these are important so I would like to design for all of these to make it a attractive enough product to acquire customers. But after solutioning, I will wnat to re-evaluate if we shoul ship all features. However, in the meantime I would lke to also think how I will know the success of my product. I think it's important to think of that now since if we knnow what to focus on that might help think of prioritizing my solution and maybe even designing the product.

Success measures: 1)# of net new customers 2)increase in QTY ordered 3) # of replacements ordered / customer. For this #3 I would want to see number go down since higher number here tells me product quality is poor which will impact future biz. I am not thinking of $ since our goal is not revenue but getting product to the masses. Now that we know our focus, let's think of waht features can help us possibly attain our goal.

Solutions:

1) Wrist band that vibrates as you approach the door. The closer to the door the stronger the vibration. Maybe I think wrist band would be wide enough that we can have vibration in middle, left, and right side. This is because if the door is on right of you vibrates on right, in front of you vibrates in middle, etc. In fact, we could even consider distance. So maybe 1 cm in front or vibrating 2 cm in front. that be the max prob or may 3 cm in front since wrist is likely not gonna be broader than that.

2) You can likely just push button to open the door but since elderly have reducing stregth this should be tough sensitive. Infact, with wrist band on you prob don't even need to touch. It just opens. But I thik there is risk to this since you may not want tthe door to just open by proximity (what if this is a basement door?). So maybe a setting where by you control these yes automated door open vs. not. auto open might be imp when my elderly customer is sick and wants to immediately go to bathroom.

3) I think we should also have it voice controlled. This will require NLP and it may need some training. There is a risk since no matter the training some accents are hard. Maybe we can support multi language capability here but I think this might be an enhancement.

4) I think a long far stretched think might be that we and design a tech product whereby a wire or something is installed with your brain (electro magnetic current) and a hanging fashionable neckless (could be sold in diff colors) could see the door in front, translates the signals to your brain and allows you to haev a vision through an AR/VR glass. I honestly don't evne know if this is possible and seems like something out of sci-fi. Compelxity is super high on this prob and will require miuch research. I doubt this is something we should consider for 1st release / launch. We can continue RD on this though.

For now I think these are good amount of solutions. I think complexity of implementation for #2 is 2 (on scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the highest) and Value to customer is 5. I would do this. #1 I think has C=3, V=5 (it gives signals to customer on where the door is so I think customer would appreciate it). I would do this as well. And #1 and #2 can equally be done together for 1st release. #3 I thikn has higher C =4 and V=5. #4 C=5, V=3. Value is lower on this because this will mean my customer will have to have something hooked to their body and no one likes that. Especially, this is going to make my customer feel inferior and odd man out in public. No one likes that! It's like drawing attention to your disability. I think I would want to conduct some research to indicate how my customers would feel psychologically about this.

I would go with release #1 and #2 as 1st release and post that start developing #3 and #4 will likely be in research phase.

All in all, desiging a door for visually blind I think is more important for an elderly. The solutions we prioritized I think are cool enough that even a non-visually impaired would be attracted to so I think we could pssibly gain more customers than expected.