Before starting with the solution: Few things to be considered here,

1. Whether it’s a single door or double of refrigerator. Accordingly the approach can be decided
2. Whether the blind persona is full blind or partial. Also do they have any audability issue
3. The age range .

Now I am assuming the customer has answered above questions as

4. Any type of refrigerator
5. Any kind of blind with NO other disability. That is person can walk move hands and response to a sound
6. Age range preferably 20 to 60

To determine the outcome of the above objective, 2 kinds of persona we can start with

7. Jamie- A blind person , 23 years old Male. Working as a music teacher. He feels good if he gets his food ready after he reaches home. The current refrigerator model do not help him to remember if he already has stored excess groceries or is he running short of any food. Eventually he ends up in buying wrong items. He will be benefiting if the refrigerator can have a mechanism to remind Jamie the items he has or at least quantity of items.
8. Rita- A partial blind person,60 years old female. Retired having age related issues. She buys her essentials once in a week along with medicines. She is diabetic too. She needs to store her medicines in cold storage. Her main problem the current refrigerator aren’t colored internally . Also too many shelves but there should be some compartments for keeping medicines or any such essentials.

On evaluation with Few users looks like above 2 issue could be a potential problem to solve.

The kpi of success which we can measure are:

9. Users are automatically reminded about the storage in less than 2 seconds from opening the door
10. Users can get a reminder every 5 days about the storage

Features which could address the issues are

11. A voice controlled refrigerator which will automatically tell to the user about the % of availability spaces and quantity present in each shelf.
12. A touch based mechanism which will tell to user which shelves can be used to store what kind of

Assumptions:

1. The main use cases for the refrigerator will be to store food (fresh or frozen) at the right temperature.
2. It will not include preparing refrigerating dishes or making ice creams etc.
3. The only disability of the user is blindness. He/She can use other senses – hearing, speaking, touching, smelling, tasting

I would follow the following format: Identify users ? Major pain points ? Possible Solutions ? Prioritizing Solutions ? Pick one solution ? Workflow for the solution ? Metrics/KPI to measure ? Potential Drawback / Point of Failure ? Summary Users: Already talked about the main actor and defined the disability Additionally, there could be friends or family members who either live with the blind person and share the fridge or could possibly help him/her out with certain assistance as required. Pain Points:

1. I do not know if there is enough space in the fridge
2. Cannot locate the items in the fridge – where did I keep what?
3. Cannot differentiate between similarly packages (e.g. – almond milk and orange juice)
4. Cannot differentiate between similar grocery/fresh items (e.g. – coriander and fenugreek)
5. I cannot find the mostly used items quickly
6. I do not know if a certain package has already expired
7. I do not know if a certain package is still good to consume (sometimes, non-expired items could also be unhealthy to consume)
8. I feel that my fridge is always dirty
9. Even if I organize it, my roommates or family members make them all jumbled up and my fridge is back to square one!

Tagline: We would build a Smart fridge in order to cater to the above needs. To make it interesting, let’s give our Smart fridge a mantra – “Always be there whenever wherever I want them!” Auxiliary needs: In addition to our Smart fridge, we would need

1. Smartphone – to provide assistance with voice command, sound and camera
2. Post-It notes and Waytags – to label text by hand and using a Smartphone respectively

Solutions:

1. Create a way to categorize the food items and allocate designate spaces or locations within the fridge – e.g. – almond milk, juice on the 1st shelf, green vegetables in the right drawer, fruits in the left drawer, ice creams in the right freezer shelf, frozen food packets on the right freezer shelf etc.
2. Designate special space for the frequently used items – eggs, milk, butter etc.
3. Organize the packet items by expiry date – the older the nearer, the newer the farther
4. Use handwritten Post-It notes on evenly surfaced food items (e..g – almond milk). Read using text-to-speech apps on Smartphone
5. Use Waytags on unevenly surfaced food items (e.g. – yogurt in a plastic package) to store and retrieve the particular item name and its expiry date
6. After taking the food item out of the fridge, make sure that you use all your senses into action to determine if it is still healthy to consume – smell, touch, taste
7. Send notifications to Smartphone whenever a food item is about to expire

Prioritization: Out of all the solutions, there are few which are purely behavioral and few related to organization. The one solution wherein technology could be very handy and impactful in making the blind person very much independent (and I find that particularly intriguing) is #5 – usage of Waytags

How does Waytag work? In case you don’t know what a Waytag is: It is basically an NFC (Near Field Communication) enabled stickers or button or rubber band using which one can store information (by typing in or using voice command) and retrieve information (by reading or using text-to-speech mechanism) and easily integrated using a Smartphone

User Flow: While putting the food items into the fridge, use way tags to store the name of the item and its expiry date. Keep them as per the categorization of the fridge space. While taking the food item out of the fridge, use compatible way tags to read the item and its expiry date. Before consuming the food item, bring all your senses alive – touch it, smell it, taste it – if something doesn’t feel right, then toss it away. You deserve to eat healthy!

Metrics/KPI to measure:

• Daily Usage of the fridge
• Space utilization of the fridge
• Weekly wastage of food items gone bad
• Quarterly / Yearly Medical Bill due to health reasons

Potential Drawback / Point of Failure: Even if the above process or management of the fridge is being put into place, the entire solution would go for a toss if the family member or roommate who is sharing the fridge is not actively involved to create the system in place.

Summary: I started off with identifying the user types, went over the pain points, brainstormed on the possible solutions, prioritized the most impactful solution, laid over the user flow, tried to capture the metrics/KPI to measure the effectiveness, and finally pointed out the single point of failure of the solution.

First, I would make the following assumptions to solve this question without instant feedback.

Assumptions:

• The main use cases for the refrigerator will be to maintain food in the right temperature and will not include making ice cubs or pouring water
• The only disability of the user is blindness

Then, I would identify the main flows used when maintaining food refrigerated, which are:

1. Putting food into the fridge
2. Taking out food out of the fridge

Within these flow these are some pain points:

Pain points

3. Putting food into the fridge:
   1. Where do I put it? In the fridge or in the cooler?
   2. How do I know if there is enough space?
   3. How do I organize food / beverages inside the fridge?
   4. How do I know food is not longer fit for consumption?
4. Taking out food out of the fridge:
   1. How do I know where is the food I want to take out?

For each flow, I would propose some solutions:

Possible solutions:

5. Putting food into the fridge:
   1. Voice command: this can help us tell the fridge which food it and then it can decide how it can stored (ideal temperature, location in fridge)
   2. Auto-arrange & auto -temperature: when users put food in fridge it will automatically set right temperature and arrange food in the fridge (it will need to identify type of food)
   3. Voice notifications: a voice alert when food is close to expire, when there is not enough space in the fridge
6. Taking out food out of the fridge:
   1. Voice command: this can help us tell the fridge which food user want to take out of the fridge

All solutions are great but if needed to select one, I would select one that satisfies 2 flows as voice command and we can over more details about its functionalities, metrics and tradeoffs

Voice command solution

7. Putting food into the fridge:
   1. User tells fridge which food it is
   2. Fridge tells user where to put food (tell directions). Ideally, it will re-arrange but maybe this scope is too broad
   3. User puts food in fridge
   4. It will set right temperature
   5. Fridge will give notification to user when food is damaged and occupancy of fridge is full
8. Taking out food out of the fridge:
   1. User will tell fridge which food it wants to take out
   2. Fridge will tell user to where the food is located

Metrics:

• Usage of voice command
• Occupancy of refrigerator
• Rotation of food (sign that user actually used the fridge)

Tradeoffs

• Accuracy of voice command (maybe voice commands wont be understood at first try)