Welcome Gift Redesign
Project Overview
The Client
Prime Digital Academy, a Minneapolis-based institution that offers immersion programs in full stack engineering and user experience design
The Challenge
Design a more personal, meaningful welcome gift for incoming Full Stack students.
The Approach
Heuristic Analysis of the current gift
Participant Observation of students
Design concepts, Low-fi prototyping, and Concept evaluations
Design Proposal and Recommendations
Outcome
A prototyped chia pet-style plant shaped in the form of the Prime logo
Role
UX Research, Prototyping, Concept Evaluation, Presentation
The Process
To design a more meaningful welcome gift for Prime Full Stack students, I used the following process:
Methods and Tools
Methods
Participant Observation
Heuristic Analysis
Low-fidelity Prototyping
Concept Evaluation (Desirability Testing)
Tools
Sketch
Paper and colored pencils
Craft supplies
Slack
The Impersonal Welcome Gift
Before creating a more meaningful welcome gift, I conducted a heuristic analysis of the existing welcome gift (water bottle) to get insights into: 1) How well the current gift (water bottle) fits the users and 2) How well the current gift is working toward the intended goal(s) of the welcome gift.
From my analysis, I identified 3 major problems with the water bottle:
One-third of the bottle is obscured, preventing the user from seeing the milliliter and ounce measurements.
The “push” button does not reliably release the lid when pressed.
Too many straw pieces. It’s not only cumbersome but if any of the three pieces is missing, it renders the straw entirely useless.
Water bottle ≠ Meaningful
Most importantly, the water bottle does NOT engender feelings of reassurance, encouragement, motivation, or support. Because it lacks a Prime logo and brand colors, the water bottle fails to foster a sense of connection to the Prime community.
What Do Full Stack Students Want?
To create a more personal, meaningful welcome gift, I first needed to know more about Prime Full Stack Engineering students:
Who are they? What do they want/need? What do they value? What kinds of things are important to them? What terms/language do they use?
To answer these questions, I conducted Participant Observation research using full stack students’ workspace video tours, a survey of responses to students’ first week on campus, and students’ responses from a Prime cohort mingle session hosted via Zoom. I grouped findings into themes using the AEIOU Framework.
I noticed that 6 out of 12 students have plants in their workspaces and most have desk toys or companions. I also learned from the data that because Full Stack students are engaged in a 20-week academically rigorous immersion program and working remotely, they want and need to feel: reassured, encouraged, motivated, and supported by and connected to the Prime community.
During a cohort mingle one full stack student modeled encouragement and referenced the growth mindset concept:
“Yet. You don’t know this yet.”
Another student from the video tours referenced the value of having a motivational object in one’s workspace:
“I think it is crucial in a workspace to have something that keeps you reminded of why you’re doing the things that you’re doing.”
From the Participant Observation research, I identified the following key insights:
Full stack students value having something that offers encouragement, motivation, and reassurance. A meaningful gift would leverage these core emotions and remind the student of their connection to their cohort family and Prime community.
Coincidentally, full stack students’ values align with Prime’s core values which center on community and the personal and professional growth of its students.
A Gift Reimagined
I saw an opportunity to draw a connection to the following components:
A motivational object to reassure students and remind them why they’re doing the Full Stack program
Prime values centered on community, learning, and growth (personal and professional)
Full stack students’ desire for reassurance, encouragement, motivation, and support
Full stack students’ references to the growth mindset
Plants
Working from the above insights, I sketched and developed three design concepts.
I presented the following three designs to my UX design colleagues. Based on their review, I decided to move forward with the Chia Pet concept.
Together-We-Stand Camera Pod
Chia Pet
Solidarity Bracelet
Maintain Your Growth Mindset
Working from my design concept, I created a low-fidelity prototype of the Prime Chia Pet.
The Prime Chia Pet features a planter in shape of the Prime logo and includes potting soil and seeds. The theme of this design centers on GROWTH--the personal and professional growth of the Prime full stack student and the physical growth of the plant.
The design concept also draws on Carol Dweck’s “Growth Mindset,” a learning perspective that sees intelligence as something that is acquired through effort and ongoing nurturing rather than something that is fixed.
The intent of the design is to allow remote Full Stack students at Prime to feel SUPPORTED, ENCOURAGED, REASSURED and CONNECTED to their COHORT FAMILY even as they work remotely and may feel alone at times.
Meaningful But Not Pragmatic
To assess the degree to which my design concept aligns with Full Stack Students’ desire to feel a sense of motivation, encouragement, reassurance, and support from the chia pet-style concept, I conducted a concept evaluation (remote video call via Slack) with three current full stack students.
I first asked participants if they received a welcome gift and what would be the most important qualities or feelings a welcome gift should communicate. I then shared multiple images of my prototype and solicited participants’ initial impressions of the concept. Using a method derived from Desirability Testing, I then asked participants to list three adjectives that best describe how they feel seeing my design concept.
Overall, participants responded positively to the concept. Their initial impressions indicated that the concept of growth resonated with one stating, “I’ve never heard the word ‘grow’ used so much before coming to Prime.” All three participants liked the concept and 2/3 thought it was a personalized, meaningful gift.
Despite the connection to growth, none of the participants drew a connection to Carol Dweck’s “Growth Mindset.” Moreover, 2/3 participants indicated the plant wouldn’t fair very well in their care. One person said, “I don’t really want to do it [maintain a plant] because I don’t have a green thumb. But I’ve always wanted a green thumb.” Another said, “Everything I touch dies. It would die in a week.” That same participant thought, however, that the Prime chia pet would build camaraderie and friendly competition among cohort mates in their shared Slack channel as people showed how their plant was doing week by week, which leads me to believe that if given the opportunity, full stack students would rise to the occasion and invest in maintaining their chia pet throughout the program.
The results from the Desirability Test were inconclusive. Although some of the words mentioned aligned with the intended design concept (grow, nurture, meaningful) there was no overlap in any of the words or adjectives mentioned.
The key takeaway: the chia plant concept was a hit. But will full stack students keep it alive?
The Pitch
After synthesizing the findings from the evaluation, I then delivered my design pitch to key stakeholders at Prime Digital Academy.
Recommendations & Next Steps
Moving forward with the growth design concept, I recommend selecting a fast-growing, low-maintenance plant option (e.g., grass seed) that would be easy to grow even for those lacking the proverbial green thumb. Alternatively, I recommend surveying current full stack students to identify a suitable substitute that still connects to the concept of “growth” (e.g., crystals) but takes a different form. A short qualitative and quantitative survey would be a low-cost approach to soliciting a more pragmatic welcome gift that still aligns with full stack students’ desire to feel motivated, encouraged, reassured, and supported.