Welcome Gift for Prime Full Stack Students
Prime Time Prep Pak
challenge
Concept and design a meaningful welcome gift for incoming Full Stack students who will be learning remotely.
solution
The Prime Time Prep Pak, a combination of a new student guide and useful supplies and tools for new Full Stack students. The intention of the Pak is to help prepare new Full Stack students for their experience at Prime so they have a better understanding about what to expect and an overview of Prime specific details. Additionally, it will promote and model the community-building and inclusive values that are core to Prime.
The Pak includes a Prime branded, personalized binder that would include informational content and additional tools that will be useful during the program.
methods
Heuristic Analysis
Participant Observations
Low Fidelity Prototypes
Research Protocol
Prototype Evaluations
tools
Google Sheets
Google Docs
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Craft Supplies
Office Supplies (as tools included in the Pak)
overview
Prime had received feedback from students that the water bottle they were giving new students as a welcome gift felt impersonal. I was asked to research and concept a gift that would be more meaningful and valuable to incoming students who would be learning remotely.
user research
I started my research by doing an Heuristic analysis on the water bottle welcome gift to determine whether it could be improved or if it would be better to concept new options. The findings revealed that the water bottle was not a meaningful gift, so I moved on to participant observations to get insight into what would be more valuable for students.
I also reviewed surveys from Full Stack students reflecting on their first week on campus and touchstone videos from new remote students sharing information about their workspaces.
key takeaways
The majority of Full Stack students:
Experience a blend of excitement and anxiety about starting their course at Prime
Are interested in finding ways to feel more connected and supported by their cohort and Prime staff
Are particular about what they surround themselves with and typically include things that help them feel calm
initial concepting
I concepted and sketched three concepts for a new welcome gift and reviewed them with a small group of UX Designers on my team. Based on the feedback, I combined two of the concepts into the Prime Time Prep Pak.
lo-fidelity prototype
Next I created a lo-fidelity prototype for use in concept evaluation and an outline with details about the contents of the Prime Time Guide. Details about the informational content, additional tools that could be considered and inspiration for the design and materials accompanied the prototype to give users a clearer idea of the full concept.
concept evaluation
Now that I had a prototype, it was time to test it, so I created a research protocol to evaluate the concept with three Full Stack students in Tier 2 and Tier 3. The evaluations were conducted remotely via Slack video calls and recorded with Otter.ai.
The evaluation protocol included questions about their experience as a new Full Stack student, how well they felt Prime prepared them at the beginning and what advice they would give new students in the Full Stack program.
The users were asked to evaluate the prototype of the Prime Time Prep Pak to help assess the value and usefulness of this gift for new Full-Stack students at Prime as well as determine the most useful informational content and tools to include.
The key goals of the evaluation were:
Evaluate the usefulness of this gift for new Full-Stack students at Prime
Determine the most useful informational content to include
Determine the most useful analog tools/supplies for Full-Stack students
concept evaluation results
After the concept evaluation testing, I compiled the research findings into the client proposal presentation.
All three users agreed the reference guide element in particular would be useful for new Full Stack students to help them feel welcome and prepared. They also all agreed that a physical object would provide them a nice break from looking at their screen.
“I do think the welcome guide would have been nice. It also gets you excited about starting a new thing.”
—Full Stack User 1
“I wasn’t very stressed about the transition but I think that that’s a big thing for people so I think that some sort of a welcome packet would be nice to kind of allay some fears.”
—Full Stack User 3
The inclusion of Post-It notes and pens had mixed results, but all users thought the Pomodoro timer would be useful.
“Information about time-blocking would be nice since that’s a big thing at Prime, so I really like the timer.”
—Full Stack User 2
recommendations and next steps
Refine and develop the content of the Prime Time Guide further based on evaluation and additional research
Select and test options for a customized Pomodoro timer
Research more useful options than the Post-It notes and pens
Create a medium-fidelity prototype and retest with users