Exercise: Please design a microwave oven. (We are vague for a reason.
Please take a risk
and do whatever you like).
Clarifications:
What kind of microwave oven? Home use, restaurant, commercial, any other?
Home use
Any special problem or anything special you are thinking of?
No
Any particular target market?
US market
Business goal? Customer acquisition, increase retention, increase revenue?
Increase retention
Structure → Identify target persona → Identify the user needs and pain points → Prioritize the
pain points → Brainstorm solutions → Identify top product metrics for measurement →
Summarize
User personas: Families, Single working individuals, College Students, Senior Citizens,
Disabled
Since the goal is to increase retention, the best persona to focus on is single working
individuals as they don’t cook very often and rely a lot on microwave prepared food. Also, as
they are financially stable with disposable income, they make a much more of an attractive
market.
Target persona → Single working individuals
User needs and pain points:
1. May not clean their oven very often
2. May heat all kinds of food such as seafood or stale food in the oven resulting in the
oven having odor
3. May not use the right containers for heating in the oven
4. Would like to know how to cook some of their favorite recipes in microwave oven
5. May hurt themselves while retrieving hot stuff from the oven by not being careful
6. May put sealed frozen food directly in the oven without thawing it or opening it a little
bit for the hot air to escape
7. Users who don’t speak English may find it difficult to use a microwave as the
instructions on the oven are in English
Prioritization: For the sake of this question, I will prioritize the use cases on a cost/benefit
scale.
1. Low cost and low impact since single individuals may not care about it a lot. Also,
microwaves can be easily cleaned
2. Low cost and low impact since bad odor can be removed using air fresheners
3. Medium cost, medium impact since single users may tend to be a little careless and
heat food in plastic containers or aluminum foil
4. High cost and high impact as single individuals may not cook often and rely more on
microwave for food
5. Low cost and low impact since any kitchen cloth can be used for this
6. Medium cost and high impact since the users may cook frozen food often without
reading the instructions carefully
7. Low cost and medium impact since users who are not comfortable in English may find
it difficult to use the different features of a microwave
Based on this evaluation, I will prioritize use cases 3, 4, 6 and 7. These four use cases will
make the microwave usage less prone to accidents and more attractive and in turn drive the
goal of increasing retention.
Solutions:
Use computer vision to detect the containers and its material to raise an alarm if not
suitable for microwave heating. Another way to solve this problem could be to stick a
label of suitable containers for heating on the microwave.
IoT enabled microwave with an accompanying app powered by AI to learn more about
users food preferences and make recommendations about recipes which can be easily
cooked in a microwave based on users’ taste
Use computer vision to detect the state of the food and its packaging before getting
heated to ensure user and food safety
Integrate voice assistant with language translation capability. This will also help all
users in using more advanced features of the microwave
Top metrics to track: Since the goal is to increase user retention:
1. frequency of usage of microwave oven → should go up
2. Types of dishes being cooked in a microwave to track the variety of food being cooked
→ should increase
3. Overall loss of food, containers and damage to microwave → should decrease
Summary:
To increase retention, we should design a new microwave oven targeted towards single
working individuals. The new oven will be powered by AI to help users cook more tasty dishes
while making it safer and easier to use at the same time.
