A Warmer Welcome
Prime Digital Academy is an immersive tech education program in Minneapolis, MN that offers a 20-week certification program in full-stack engineering. The Prime model is widely known—and advertised to prospective and incoming students—to be a highly intensive experience that demands a full-time mental and interpersonal commitment of its participants. As a program that values a student-focused and empathetic approach from day one, Prime stakeholders were interested in assessing and, if necessary, improving upon the welcome gift that students receive as they embark on their full-time experience.
How can a simple gift have a big[ger] impact?
Through student surveys, touchstone tours, and artifact analysis, I discovered an unexpected stressor in the existing gift. . . and an untapped opportunity to solve an even more pressing issue by proposing a newly-designed solution.
The Big Picture
Client
Prime Digital Academy
Tech certification program in
Minneapolis, MN
Project
Assessment and redesign of water bottle welcome gift for new full-stack
engineering students
Proposal
Replacing the water bottle with a fun desktop toy to ease the first-day jitters and create a memory
Role
Research
Design
Propose / Present
Extracting the Stressors
When Prime stakeholders presented their problem to me, they identified that full-stack engineering students were currently receiving a water bottle as a gift on their first day of class. In addition to being out of manufacture, they had also heard that students found the bottle to be impersonal and had unspecified usability issues. To better understand why students might respond in this manner and to prevent those feelings from carrying over into the replacement gift, I first reviewed survey responses from current full-stack students for insights into the first day mindset and the values that students carry personally and interpersonally within the classroom. Surveys revealed clearly that, although students quickly develop a shared sense of positivity, mutual support, and collaboration, they arrive on Day 1 feeling anxious about the challenge, insecure in their abilities, and uncertain of how they will gel with others in their cohort.
Furthermore, touchstone surveys of full-stack student workspaces showed that laptops and additional monitors were standard, along with other tools like notebooks or tablets subject to personal preference. With such crowded workspaces, how well did a the water bottle play along?
Notes from participant surveys and touchstone tours compiled into an AEIOU framework. Key observations led to several hypotheses around challenges with the current water bottle welcome gift and goals that an improved gift should meet.
“. . . at first seemed quite intimidating. . . My personality didn't really show until I got to know all my cohort.”
— Student describing their first week at Prime
Heuristic analysis of the existing water bottle welcome gift revealed that, although the design offered generally good visibility and attractive aesthetics, error potential was high and recovery opportunity minimal,. This oversight posed a particular danger in an environment where electronics are prominent and in constant use. View the full heuristic analysis.
Making a Splash. . . but not in a good way
In collaboration with a colleague, I conducted a heuristic analysis of the current Prime water bottle to determine the degree to which usability might impact students’ feelings toward it as a gift. Analysis revealed that, although sleek-looking and flexible, there were clear concerns about error prevention and recovery. The bottle was heavy glass that would easily break irreparably if dropped, and with a wide mouth and uniformly narrow shape, it would be easy to spill a majority of its contents in one fell swoop if tipped. This concern about error recovery nearly turned from a hypothetical into a real-life disaster when, upon testing the opening of the bottle after filling, the force required to unseal the cap caused a large amount of liquid to splash out of the top and land mere centimeters from my laptop keyboard. Imagine that for a welcome!
The analysis proved that there was a significant danger in using this water bottle around expensive and sensitive electronic devices, which could easily lead to feelings among students that there wasn’t much intention behind the gift. What kind of gift would demonstrate care and intention toward students?
In considering design alternatives, it was important to think about the mindset in which students would first receive their gift and the kind of feelings it would evoke. What could this gift do to be responsive to the anxiety of new students? How could it encourage self confidence and collaboration in an environment that values positivity and support? A better water bottle might solve some practical problems and be a perfectly acceptable gift, but could we do more?
What a Stressed-Out Student Wants
Comparing the findings outlined in the AEIOU framework and heuristic analysis, I created three storyboards that I incorporated into three different design concepts for a new welcome gift. In the interest of giving stakeholders a familiar option, I considered a more appropriate drinking vessel that would be less likely to cause unintentional damage and ensuing frustration. But I also thought more broadly about concepts that would approach the goal of relieving first-day jitters from a more proactive angle:
A monitor clip-on toy that corresponds to the results of a professional personality assessment to help instill a sense of confidence in students’ innate abilities and provide a visual cue to facilitate communication between new cohort members.
A USB drive pre-loaded with guided meditations, stretching ideas, and other suggestions for healthy self-care to help students manage stress and find calm moments in their day.
I consulted with colleagues and received critique on each idea, and based on their feedback and its relevance to the goal, decided to proceed with prototyping the monitor clip-on toy.
After a critique of three design concepts with colleagues, I considered their insights and selected one concept to move into the prototyping and evaluation phase.
“[It’s] great when you can take something that’s physically there that shows the journey you’ve taken.”
— Prime full-stack engineering student describing the intrinsic value of objects on his desk.
A low-fidelity prototype of the monitor toy—a smiling monkey—made with household items. This prototype was presented to current and former Prime full-stack students for their feedback based on a detailed evaluation plan. View the evaluation plan.
Getting Confidence in The Idea
Once I had created a low-fidelity prototype of the toy and sample personality survey explanation sheet to accompany it, I developed an evaluation plan with which to test the concept. The plan aimed to:
Understand students’ feelings about professional personality profiles,
Evaluate the extent to which the concept increases confidence in students and encourages social connection,
Determine the extent to which the gift demonstrates value to the student recipient, and
Understand how it would be used by students in the classroom.
Three current and former Prime full-stack students were recruited to participate in the evaluation, which included a card-sorting activity to determine student priorities regarding personality assessment and a series of scenario-based questions to determine if the concept had potential to achieve its desired effect. While the card-sorting activity ended up having to be dropped due to time constraints and technical difficulties, the findings spoke clearly enough for themselves even without it.
When asked their feelings around professional personality assessments, all three participants expressed ambivalence, sharing a belief that results are unreliable and not terribly meaningful. As a gift designed around the idea that assessment can provide a confidence boost and foster curiosity about others, this feedback suggested that the intent would not play out in application. However, upon proceeding to share the prototype with participants, their response toward the toy itself was overwhelmingly favorable. Even though they did not see value in the toy as a representation of their personality, the participants generally thought it would, in and of itself, be symbolic of something else: the Prime experience. Most encouragingly, participants generally agreed that having the toy at their desk would reduce the anxiety of their first day.
Making the Case for a Smiling Face
After synthesizing evaluation findings, I had enough evidence to feel confident in pursuing a simplified version of the design concept and goal, reframing it from a multi-pronged approach aimed at tackling both personal and interpersonal anxiety to a straightforward “something lighthearted to make them smile” solution. With this revised concept, I prepared to present my proposal to Prime stakeholders. In a persuasive presentation with supporting slide deck, I highlighting the value of appealing to students’ emotional state upon receiving their welcome gift by citing evidence from student observations, heuristic analysis, and prototype evaluation. . . and by giving the toy a cute name: Peanut.
But some significant questions still remained. Would students respond as well to Peanut within the present stress of the moment as evaluation participants did in their memory of it? How would advancing the fidelity of the prototype impact students’ response to it? And was the cute animal form of the prototype, now that it no longer needed to correspond to a personality survey, the right one for a larger-scale rollout?
Of course, the only way to find out would be more research and testing. View the plan I compiled to get to the bottom of these lingering questions and arrive at a final design recommendation.
Slides from the design proposal presentation to Prime stakeholders. I used storyboards to show the design concept’s intended impact on students and the revised, predicted outcome based on evaluation findings. The storyboards showed that, although the original design concept was unlikely to hit every mark, simplifying both the product and the goal would still yield positive results that a different iteration of the water bottle gift may not..
The Takeaway
Objects have the power to carry significance far beyond their utility. They can fit seamlessly into their environment, or they can be shoehorned in like the last item in your carryon bag. They can add an unexpected burst in your day. . . sometimes welcomed, sometimes not. They can contribute to someone’s struggle, or make it a little less tough. They can be useful without being meaningful, and meaningful without being useful.
Sometimes an object is just an object. But until you dig deeper, you may never know what it truly is. . . or what it could be with a little empathy and imagination.
Header photo from Prime Digital Academy Facebook page.