Prompts by Prime: Product Design

The Problem

As new students prepare to start their first day of class at Prime Digital Academy, they’re feeling all the feelings: excitement, overwhelm, fear, anxiety… even imposter syndrome. To calm some of those fears, Prime sends students a Welcome Gift. Unfortunately, the current gift, a non-branded water bottle isn’t hitting the mark. 

How might we help new students feel supported in a major time of transition? 

The Solution

Prompts by Prime, a small, digitized white board creates a brief moment every morning for students to reflect on what’s important and remind them of the bigger picture. Each morning, a new push message will appear on the board, prompting students to consider things like, “What do you need to feel empowered?” and “What would you do if you couldn’t fail.” Linked directly to the student’s Slack channel, Prompts by Prime starts to build comradery, connecting, and empathy from the get-go. 

The Process

UNCOVERING PAIN POINTS

Before brainstorming ideas, we needed to understand the current product. A colleague and I examined the existing water bottle, identified and then performed five main user tasks to uncover what worked and didn’t work as expected. Findings were then connected to heuristic violations and ranked based on frequency, impact, persistence and market impact.

Surprisingly, 22 violations were found, so the decision was made to abandon the water bottle and move forward with a totally different concept. 

To uncover current pain points of remote full-stack students, I conducted participatory observations using touchstone tour videos of 12 currents students. I organized my findings using AEIOU framework, capturing the student’s activities, environment, interactions, objects and users. I also took a look at Prime’s social media channels, as well as Google Reviews to get a sense of student’s experiences—past and present. Several insights emerged, including a need for comfort (physically, mentally, and emotionally) and help transitioning from their previous lives into a new, fully-immersive program. 

DESIGNING FOR COMFORT

Based on the research, the question became, “How might we help new students transition into a new, sometimes overwhelming program while still finding comfort in the chaos? 

Keeping the budget and Prime’s design constraints in mind, I used rapid ideation & affinity mapping to create several concepts to bring back to the design team for review. Concepts were prioritized based on connection to user need and alignment with Prime’s values. 

EVALUATING THE DESIGN

The prioritized concept, Prompts By Prime, was then turned into a physical prototype in order to get insights and feedback from full-stack students through Evaluation Interviews. An evaluation plan was created and three 15-minute interviews were conducted to understand how well the concept aligned to student’s values and evaluate its effectiveness of helping students transition into life at Prime.   

All of the participants immediately recognized what the concept was and how it could be used, both individually and as a group. Two out of the three students interviewed saw how it would add value to their workflow, stating: 

The Next Steps

While the concept’s purpose and intent were clear, I identified three considerations prior to implementation:

 Consider Community: When asked, “How would you make this better?”, one student expected that the prototype would be used in a group setting and connect with Prime’s existing reflection portal or the Slack Channel. This addition was seen as a great way to build comradery and connection with their cohort. “It would be beneficial to hear what other people think.”

Consider Form: Space is at a premium on Full-Stack Student desks. If it doesn’t serve an immediate and necessary need, it gets deprioritized to the back of the desk… or in a drawer. “[My workspace] so cluttered…I’m hoping to declutter more, but it works for now. I try to stay as minimal as I can.” Add flexibility by allowing the product to be hung or tied into existing digital channels. 

Consider Implementation: While two of the three students would find personal value in the prototype, one student felt that this would take up valuable group time that is already at a minimum. Given the intensity of the Prime curriculum, I recommended that this be an “Opt-in” vs “Opt-out” exercise.  “I wouldn’t want this to take any more than 5, maybe 10 minutes, because there’s just so much other stuff to do.”

Overall, I believe the concept shows promise. It aligns well with Prime’s values, solves a need for current students, and could be used beyond student’s time at Prime.