Prime Digital Academy

Prime Digital Academy is located in Downtown Minneapolis, MN that offers Full Stack Engineering and User Experience Design programs to build meaningful tech careers by creating an immersive learning community through challenges, real-world problems, and humanizing technology.

Overview

Prime Digital Academy has been giving their Full Stack Student a Water Bottle as a welcome gift as they dive into a 20-week immersive program to become Software Engineers; however, this water bottle is no longer useable and has no connection with students and their experience at Prime.  

Prime wants to ensure that students receive a welcome gift that will contribute to their learning experience and the campus culture. The intent of a welcome gift is to ensure students are feeling enthusiastic, appreciated, and comfortable that will establish unique connections with the instructors and their cohorts.

I took on this project to research on the Full Stack Students and developed a new welcome gift that would be more meaningful through an AEIOU observation, sketching out design concepts and built a low-fidelity prototype where I evaluated three students and their interactions and thoughts. I then presented this pitch to Prime.

Solution

Full Stack Students spends most of their day at their desk – solving problems and creating codes. They value progress, achieving their end goals, and enhancing their skills and knowledge through their busy day at Prime and one of the things that keeps them going is staying hydrated whether it’s through water, coffee, or pop. Every student has some sort of beverages at their desk; therefore, I have designed a Heating and Cooling Coaster that allows students to control the temperature of their drink.

Key features to the coaster:

  • Portable and lightweight

  • Wireless USB-C Charging

  • Heat temperature can be constant up to 131F (55℃)

  • Cool temperature can be constant as low as 50F (10℃)

  • Does not destroy drink nutrients or flavor

Tools

  • Notebook/Sketches

  • Pen and Pencil

  • Microsoft Words

  • PowerPoint Slides

  • Zoom

  • iPhone for recording

  • Physical Prototype

Methods

  • Heuristic Analysis

  • Participant observation

  • Sketched Design Concept 

  • Usability Testing

  • Presentation Pitch

Users

Full Stack Students

Role

UX Design & Researcher

Solo Project

Gaining Insights

I identified main tasks that could be accomplished by the current welcome gift which is a water bottle and detect the usability issues to gain a deeper understanding of what it was lacking to resolve the problem. My goal was to find the value in the interactions that Full Stack Students are having with this water bottle. I used my findings to help guide me into designing a more meaningful welcome gift for Full Stack Students. Regarding to my findings, I ranked each violation based on Jakob’s Nielson’s severity rating scale.

Severity Ranking Scale

Research

In order to understand my users, I became a marginal participant to blend into the Full Stack Students’ environment through an AEIOU Observation. Through this observation, I found that the Full Stack Students spend a lot of their time at their desk working independently and will frequently collaborate with one another and ask for feedbacks. As I indulge myself into their environment, these are the questions I sought to answer:

  • What kind of activities are they trying to achieve?

  • What’s their environment like? Do they have shared spaces?

  • Do they have a routine? Who are they interacting with?

  • What’s the nature of their interaction with objects?

  • What is their goal? What do they value?

Key findings:

  • Full Stack students has a busy and full day

  • They’re behind a computer screen all day

  • Always have a drink at their desk – coffee, water, pop

  • Lots of critical thinking and problem solving

  • Desk is personable to each student

  • Comfortable, homey, and collaborative environment

 

I started thinking about design concepts that would contribute to their environment that felt more personalize to each student. I wondered, How can I make them feel more comfortable?

Visualizing My Ideas

After observing the Full Stack Student’s environment, I have created three design concept that I found would be a more suitable as a welcome gift to enhance the user’s experience with Prime. Storyboards were used to understand and visualize the environment and how students will interact with the prototype. My focus was to create a design that felt like home and personal to users.

 

I then collaborated with my design team with my ideas to get their feedbacks. They helped me narrow down my ideas to one, in which it was agreed to move forward with the Heating and Cooling Coaster. This was designed for users to control the perfect temperature of their drink as nobody likes a cold coffee and many students expressed that they preferred ice cold water/pop.

Heating & Cooling Coaster

This coaster can be used to make any drink hot or cool. It is portable, lightweight, and easy to carry.

Portable Desktop Cleaner

This portable desktop cleaner has a dual brush and suction that easily picks up any mess and can dust laptop and keyboard.

Laptop Rise Stand

This laptop riser stand is design to adjust the laptop screen for better viewing and correct user’s posture instead of hunching.

How does it Work?

I went to Leonardo’s Basement to create a low-fidelity prototype that acted similar to what the final product may function as. The focus here were to give users the idea of the purpose of a new welcome gift and to gain insights on how this may enhance their experience with Prime. I wanted to create a design that was simple, easy to use, and meet users’ needs. While creating the Heating and Cooling Coaster, it was important to me for it to have features that clearly communicates its functions. The idea behind this design is to allow users to control the temperature of their drink to stay warm or cold without needing a kettle or refrigerator. All you have to do is tap the built in button without ever having to leave your desk. This is convenient, especially if you are in the middle of trying to solve a coding problem like Full Stack Students at Prime.

Universal icons to indicate power, heating, and cooling features with buttons

Red light indicates that the heater on the coaster is on and warms up coffee/tea

Blue light indicate that the cooling is on the coaster and cool any drinks such as water

Testing

I conducted a 15 minute Think Aloud Evaluation and a survey with 3 Full Stack Students allowing them to express their thoughts, opinion, and feelings about receiving the Heating and Cooling Coaster as a new welcome gift. Through this, I discovered that this would be a great welcome gift as not only can it be used at Prime, but also at home. It saves students time and the multiple trip it’ll take to go to the commons (kitchen) to warm up their coffee or grab a cold cup of water. It made students feel happy to know that they can control the temperature of their drink through their busy day as it is one last thing to worry about. I decided to approach this as an interview-like survey because it allowed me to gain insights if this design was worth investing into and what the pain points were for me to improve on.

3/3 participants expressed they would love this as a welcome gift and found that the cooling feature stood out to them the most.

Goals:

  1. To better understand how to improve productivity while staying hydrated and healthy.

  2. Gain insights around Full Stack Students environment and feelings.

  3. Gain insights on the practicality of the welcome gift and understand the impression it makes new full stack students feel 

  4. Understanding full stack students’ needs to be comfortable and create a homey space.

  5. Identify pain points, are the buttons flexible and easily recognizable? Are they consistent? 

Proposal

As Prime’s Full Stack Students are investing in their new career path with becoming Software Engineers, Prime is also investing in their students to enhance their community, learning environment, and productivity. It is important that during this 20 immersive week program, Full Stack Students maintain their health by staying hydrated and motivated through a safe and comfortable space that also feels personal to them. It was my end goal to create a design to help students ease into their new environment and ensure that they were able to engage the full experience with Prime.

I synthesize my research and condense my findings where I presented to Prime my design of the Heating and Cooling Coaster and how it can enhance student’s learning experience and the campus culture. I designed this new welcome gift that not only aligned with Prime’s value but also aligned with the student’s motivation to achieve their end goal.

Key Takeaway

A welcome gift can establish unique connections right in the beginning and reassure the nervous and anxious feeling when making a change in your life. It sets great first impression and will enhance the user’s experience. Through my usability finding, I was able to understand their feelings and connect with them. I found that a minimalistic and aesthetic look is important in physical prototype and the consistency of function made it intuitive where users didn’t have to think twice what the buttons were made for. My prototype lacked some features such as how to identify the temperature settings other than just the ring light appearing, users found that it would be nice to have a adjusting temperature feature.

Next Steps:

Going forward, I would like to test different temperature setting and finding features that will allow for users to control the right temperature of their choice. I have also found that it was difficult to identity if the coaster was on after pressing the power button, perhaps, designing a light feature for the power button the same way it indicates for when it’s warm or cold.

If I were able to make these changes, I would continue future usability testing to make sure my idea is doable and plan a budget in a proper way.