SECRECY FLASH DISK
Your safe and confidential solution
Nowadays, many people still keep secrets or important files in their USB flash disks, but it is indeed not a safe and confidential enough solution when they are borrowed to someone else or lost somewhere.
Problem Statement
Have you ever met with the similar problems in the video?
- Honor Code affair
- Privacy affair
- Document leakage
Need Statement
The solution to the problems above is flash disk with protection for information.
Design Inspiration
The design comes from the multi-color pen. Users can slide different buttons in order to open the corresponding folder.
Design Sketch
Button on the end: draw back USB port.
Buttons around side wall: different colors corresponds to different folders inside.
State 1: USB flash disk is closed.
State 2: end button is pressed, port is pushed out.
State 3: one side button is slided, users can open corresponding folder.
Final Design
Four different colors to color different folders. Four side buttons can only control the folder with corresponding color.
HOW TO USE THE PRODUCT?
Quick look
When users begin to use the flash disk, they should first press the end button to let out USB port.
After connecting the flash disk to the computer, there exist four colored folders by default, which are factory settings. Users can hide them but cannot delete them. If users want some common folders, they can create new ones in or out of the four colored folders by themselves.
The four side buttons on the side wall of the flash disk can only control the folder of the same color.
HOW TO HIDE SOME FILES?
Method I
Take a picture named 'sketch_book.jpg' for example, and assume the red folder as the target folder.
Users can directly drag the picture into the red folder.
When sliding the red side button, users will find the red folder disappear with the files in it, which means it is hidden.
This method can only be used when the target folder exist (not hidden already).
HOW TO HIDE SOME FILES?
Method II
Users can directly right click on the figure, and choose the target folder, for example, red folder. Then the figure will be moved into the red folder. This method can always be used even if the target folder may not exist (hidden already).
Since the red folder has the highest security level by default, if users slide back the red side button to show the red folder again, the flash disk will ask users for a password input.
Personal Contribution, Reflection, Discussion
My contributions in this design include directing the video, designing the user guide of the product, and conducting the UX/UI design of the secrecy flash disk. All the visuals are arranged in the order as they were created during the whole design process.
In this project, we first came up to solve a daily-life problem of information secrecy using flash disk. Then the needs became to redesign a flash disk with perfect information protection. After that, we brainstormed many crazy ideas and sketched them down. We also did the CAD model for the design, and wrote the user manual with more details of how the product worked.
In this project, I gained much more UX/UI design experience since users are the key drivers of the human-centered design methodology. The video shows three problems arising in daily activities about common flash disk, which is a good showcase for narrating our whole design story. Our future work regarding this design is to build the physical prototype which includes hardware and software design, and do the test about our design settings.