Functional Requirements
1. The future product should allow users to learn about materials
As a material selection tool, the most important functionality is information on an abundance of materials. The platform should present data from multiple perspectives. Interacting with materials is the best way to learn about it. We think presenting a 3D model of the material that users can move around and manipulate is important to our product.
2. The future product should allow users to compare materials
This requirement is significant for industrial designers to influence material selection in a company. It allows designers to present their choices with other team roles with visualized data and provides industrial designers more control of material selection for the products they design.
3. The future product should recommend sustainable substitutes
This requirement is significant to our future design because many designers have a hard time identifying what materials are sustainable. Therefore, our future product should incorporate recommendations of sustainable substitutes functionality to make it easy for designers to choose sustainable materials.
Nonfunctional requirements
1. The future product should inspire designers with new materials
To promote more usage of sustainable materials, we first need to get designers out of their old habits in material selection and have them start looking into other possibilities. Instead of being a passive material database, we want to actively push users to learn about new sustainable materials daily.
2. The future product should be easy to use
We think that its high learning curve and necessary preparation before use is a turn-away to many designers. Therefore, our future product must be easy to use. It should be a standalone application without any necessary preparation, such as database importation. It should be easily accessible through a web browser.
3. The future product interface should be visually appealing and calming
This requirement is significant because the industrial design is a stressful career, and sustainability is not necessary for industrial designers. Having an overwhelming amount of information on the user interface will add to the designers’ stress level and will not satisfy the aesthetic standard for industrial designers. We think that our future product must be visually pleasing to have recurring users.
4. The future product should promote sustainable mindsets
Most of our novice interview participants suggested that they do not consider sustainability at school because the prototype they make for classes will not be manufactured in the end. Furthermore, our expert interview participants pointed out that when an industrial designer is working in a company, their material selection is largely influenced by the company’s budget and other roles in the company, such as engineers. Therefore, it’s hard for industrial designers to keep their sustainable standards. Our future product must keep industrial designers’ standards on sustainability.