Case Study: Prime Pop
Overview
The Prime Pop is a unique and delightful customized welcome gift that creates new and memorable moments for Full Stack Engineering (FSE) Students at Prime Digital Academy. The Prime Pop provides an easy way to start a conversation and unites students as Primers.
Impact Statement
Pen and paper
3D prototyping
Keynote
Tools
Heuristic analysis
Prototyping
User testing
Methods
UX Researcher, UX Designer
My Roles
Research
I conducted a heuristic analysis, testing the water bottle against Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics, and found that the existing water bottle was ineffective at key functions: preventing spilling, filling the water bottle, and drinking from the water bottle. Although the water bottle was easy to transport, the major violations in the water bottle’s design made it an ineffective welcome gift.
Heuristic Analysis
In addition to the heuristic violations I discovered, the water bottle did not create community for FSE students. In my observational research, I found that community was a large part of a FSE student’s daily life. With both poor design and unsatisfactory meeting of values, I designed new concepts for a welcome gift.
Observational Research
The original welcome gift for FSE students at Prime Digital Academy was a water bottle. I was tasked with designing a new, more meaningful gift for FSE students. I first wanted to understand the issues with the current welcome gift, so I employed two research methods.
Design
I brainstormed many ideas for a new welcome gift, informed by my research results on the values FSE students hold. From my initial list, I pared it down to three design concepts.
My teammates dot voted on their favorite design, and the Prime Pop design received 15/17 votes. The Prime Pop is a customizable figurine of each Prime student wearing a Prime hoodie and Prime t-shirt.
Design Concepts
I went to a maker-space in Minneapolis to build a 3D prototype of my design concept to use in user testing. I built the prototype with found items during a 2-hour build session.
Prototype
Me, building my prototype
My prototype
Evaluate
Giving a welcome gift is good – but what if no one wants it? I constructed an evaluation plan to test just that. The key goals I developed were to:
Gain insight into how FSE students understand their sense of community.
Identify how FSE students would feel when receiving the gift.
Gain insight into how FSE students would use the gift.
I then selected research methods that would directly address these goals:
Values Ranking
Desirability Testing
Interview Questions
Survey
Evaluation Plan
User Testing and Analysis
I conducted 3, 15-minute research sessions with 3 different FSE students to answer my evaluation goals.
Through my research, I discovered that participants felt very positively about the Prime Pop:
3/3 smiled when they first saw the gift
3/3 described the gift as “fun”
3/3 said they didn’t have anything like the gift
Me, conducting a desirability test with a participant
Desirability test results across all 3 participants
“This gift is super unique, I would feel really connected with my program and Prime.” -FSE student
I also discovered that the Prime Pop aligned closely with Prime’s values, notably Include Everyone and Foster Community.
I pitched my final product idea and research findings to the team at Prime in a persuasive presentation. Some key slides are below.
