How can we…
provide a meaningful experience to students?
Project Overview
My role
UX Designer and Researcher
Methods & Tools
AEIOU Observations
Usability Test
Think-Aloud protocol
Desirability Test
Sketch drawing
Physical prototype building
FullQuack Buddy was created to provide Prime Full Stack students with a digital companion to help with self-care, personalization, and camaraderie. The development of this design is a proposal to replace the Prime Digital Academy’s current welcome gift. Continue reading below to learn more about the design and pitch of the FullQuack Buddy.
The Client
Prime Digital Academy Minneapolis is located in the historic Grain Exchange Building in Minnesota. Prime is an immersive learning program aimed to transform lives by helping people build meaningful tech careers. They have a rich community of alumni and have helped hundreds of students launch their careers with the help of our Full Stack Engineering and User Experience Design programs.
Opportunity Space
Prime has been providing a water bottle to its Full Stack development students as a welcome gift when they arrive on campus. Unfortunately, this water bottle is no longer being manufactured; in addition staff have heard that some students have found it rather unusable and impersonal.
Prime has hired me to approach this problem. I must research what's wrong with the current gift and propose a meaningful welcome gift substitute for their Full Stack cohorts. Then I must propose my design concept to Prime stakeholders.
Design and propose a meaningful welcome gift for Prime Full Stack students.
Defining ‘meaningful’
Before I sought out a design it was important to understand the Full Stack students better to understand what would (or wouldn't) be a meaningful gift. In order to do so I went about conducting AEIOU observations of the Full Stack students at Prime. This included observing students in the classroom and their breaks in between lectures.
In my observations, I noticed 3 core themes:
Students found different ways to express their individuality whether it be through their sense of style, custom peripherals, or desk decoration.
Students expressed the importance of taking breaks away from coding or productive methods of troubleshooting, such as “Rubber ducking”.
Students had a sense of camaraderie with their cohort.
Out with the old
The next step was to evaluate the current gift and see whether it met those values that were just observed. By conducting a Heuristic Analysis of the current gift I could gain a better understanding of what was not working with the water bottle being provided.
Based on our evaluation the current gift, is practical and functions as intended, but is impersonal to the rich values that permeates through Prime and their students.
In With The New
FullQuack Buddy was created to provide Prime Full Stack students with a digital companion to help with self-care, personalization, and camaraderie. The development of this design is a proposal to replace the Prime Digital Academy’s current welcome gift. Continue reading below to learn more about the design and pitch of the FullQuack Buddy.