Junior Product Designer for SharkNinja
Jul 2018 - Jul 2019
Between July 2018 to July 2019 I joined the Research, Innovation & Advanced Development team (RAID) as a Junior Product Designer at SharkNinja’s design studio in London. RAID was a new, internal UCD team created to identify future facing opportunities while solving user needs in domestic kitchens for the Ninja kitchenware & appliance brand.
While I can't go into depth about many of the projects that I worked on due to ongoing NDA agreements, I can show the various roles I performed during my time on the RAID team using a limited set of photos from projects that are now commericially released products.
User research was one of the major roles I helped the RAID team perform as it was our responsibility to the business to analyse gaps and unsolved user painpoints that could be worth engineering solutions for.
Input as part of a interview team of 3
I helped the team conduct initial exploratory research via methods such as in-home user interviews throughout London and Boston. We would identify and visit 10-15 users over the course of a week, where we would conduct long form research sessions covering multiple topics.
These sessions would sometimes include additional research activities such as home tours or observing the user cook a regular home meal.
In addition to exploratory research sessions we would also run in-home concept testing and feedback exercises. The one pictured above is asking the user to physically assemble experiences they would like within a product while assigning each piece a cost with a cap on the user's spend.
One of my main roles for these research activities would be designing and constructing the artefacts or visualisation boards needed for each session.
From our research sessions we would then build out our synthesis in order to convey to the business our key findings, insights and recommendations of future product development choices.
Depending on the specific project my role in this could be aiding my team members synthesis sessions or running my own.
These photos are a few examples of how we would build opportunity questions from our user data and how these would then be mapped into key HMW questions that would facilitate initial experience ideation sessions.
We would then build and present the outputs of our research and synthesis to the senior management team and occassionally board members.
Once we recieved feedback from senior management on which of the identified paths they would like us the pursue first, the team would work to generate, prototype and validate the detailed design of possible experience solutions.
This started with ideation sessions which led to higher fidelity concept sketches that explored the specific interactions users could perform.
All the sketches seen in this section are of my own contributions to this process for multiple projects.
Depending on the project I would also perform more Industrial Design related tasks to explore forms and styles the experiences' physical product would take. These would be performed through sketches and 'quick & dirty' CAD models and renders.
One of my specialisms within the team was exploring and building possible new product UI interactions and visuals, using Adobe XD for interaction mock-ups.
I would help produce many of the visualisations and prototypes for user research, in many instances for initial testing these would be experience storyboards to quickly convey to users' the direction of a potential product.
I also conducted internal prototyping work for projects, here quick cardboard interaction testing is shown but I also helped build functional prototypes via our in-house workshop and 3D print farm.
Visualisations would sometimes be taken further into fully rendered CAD models like seen below. I produced these for both user testing sessions and internal presentations.
The final main role that I helped my team with was the design and engineering of high-fidelity concept models so that we could conduct accurate A/B test scenarios with users.
This data would then be collated and inform further engineering design decisions.
Here is a collection of the currently released products that have evolved from the projects that I directly worked on while at SharkNinja.
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The Ninja TWISTi, High-Speed Blender DUO blender delivers the smoothest purees and finest blends of any Ninja pitcher with its built-in Twist Tamper, Hybrid-Edge™ high-speed blades, and a powerful motor. The built-in Twist Tamper pushes down ingredients toward the high-speed blades to create perfectly thick outputs like smoothie bowls and nut butters.
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With the Ninja® Foodi® Power Mixer™ System, you can tackle all your essential food prep tasks in no time. Simply connect the 750-peak-watt PowerBase™ with one of two attachments to transform it into whatever you need it to be.
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The Ninja® Foodi™ Smart XL Grill is the smart grill that sears, sizzles and air fry crisps. With the innovative Smart Cook System and XL capacity, achieve the perfect doneness from rare to well done on large family meals at the touch of a button.
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Ninja® Foodi® Smoothie Bowl Maker and Nutrient Extractor with smartTORQUE™ designed to blend and power through the thickest ingredients at high speed and never stall. One base with multi-functions. The Ninja® Nutrient Extraction* Cup and Spout Lid for smoothies and extractions. The Ninja® Smoothie Bowl Maker with built-in tamper powers through frozen foods with less liquid for thick smoothie bowls and nut butters.
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The Ninja® Cold Press Juicer Pro, a better way to juice at home. With Cold Press Technology, this powerful masticating juicer produces more juice, less foam, and brighter colors than leading centrifugal juicers. It's easy to clean, compact in size, and quiet. The Ninja® Cold Press Juicer Pro creates the perfect juice experience right in your kitchen.
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Master Grill, BBQ Smoke, and Air Fry outdoors with 100% real woodfire flavors. It burns real wood pellets for a true outdoor BBQ experience—minus the hassle.
