Designing a welcome gift for students at Prime
Introduction
Prime Digital Academy is an educational institution that offers student-centered immersive programs in both user experience design and full-stack engineering.
The Challenge
The welcome gift Prime had beed giving to its Software Development students went out of production. This gift was found by students to be unusable and impersonal. I was asked to reimagine a new gift that better fit the needs of its students.
My role: Research, Sketching, Prototyping
Discovery.
Product Research
In order to understand what about the current gift was not meeting student’s needs, and to ensure not to repeat those oversights, I conducted a heuristic analysis report to determine its ability to perform its appointed tasks
User Research
I wanted to learn about the environment of Software Development students: What it looked like, how they inhabited it, how they interacted with each other and their physical environment. I conducted participant observation research of one of the cohorts within their classroom and around campus using AEIOU framework.
Observation guide: AEIOU Framework
Define.
From the research I was able to determine common characteristics of a full stack student and their environment:
Sit at desk 6-8 hours a day
Spend the majority of that time on a computer
Have two computer monitors at different heights
Have very few items on their desk
Work individually and in teams
Move to new desk every week
Most had almost no paper on their desks
And furthermore discern some potential pain points:
Disorganized cords
Neck or back pain from looking at a computer all day
Clutter (they avoid anything that causes clutter)
Moving all their belongings every week
Eye strain from computer screen
Ideation.
I created 3 design concepts that each met slightly different needs of our user based on my research findings
Me and 3 fellow designers evaluated the concepts side-by-side and voted on which one to move forward on…
Prototype.
I created a prototype of the chosen design concept for the purpose of conducting concept evaluations with current full-stack students. The goal was to be able to use the prototype to determine how well the electronics organizer met the needs of students, how they liked the idea, and to determine areas for improvement.
Validate.
From the concept evaluations, this is some positive feedback I got about the product….
When asked to rate the gifts level of connection to Prime, 3 out of 3 students gave it 4 stars or above
One student found the product so useful she mentioned 3 different times that it met her needs
When asked to rate its level of thoughtfulness as a gift, 2/3 students rated it at 5 stars, and the other student gave it 4 stars.
I also got some recommendations for improvement by students…
Enhance
Another student mentioned installing a battery pack in the case would increase its level of usability for them
Customize
One student mentioned she would find the gift even more thoughtful if their name and cohort name were somewhere on the product
Next Step
Refine prototype and implement recommendations.