Timelite

By Connor Steffens UX/UI Design and Researcher

Executive summary

In this project, I was tasked with designing and researching a new welcome gift for Prime Digital Academy students on their first day. Prime is an accelerated learning program that teaches students Full-stack engineering and UX design and Research.

we evaluated the current welcome gift and identified the pain points. Came up with new designs and sent them in a survey to the user group. Then Took the most liked idea and moved into physical prototyping and a client pitch presentation.

goals

  • Identify pain points and opportunities through research.

  • Prototype solutions based on findings.

  • Propose evaluation methods for designs/prototypes.

  • Test prototypes with users to inform design recommendations.

  • Synthesize research findings to uncover insights.

Methods

  • Discovery Research

  • Desirability Survey

  • Physical Prototyping

  • Usability Testing

  • Client Pitch Presentation

product research

As a part of a team we conducted two research interviews with current students lasting 15 min

Insights

  • Both students felt that the gift of a shirt made them feel welcomed. But both students rarely, if ever, wore the shirt.

  • Both students used the lanyard every day but were not thrilled with the quality and felt offended by the gift.

  • Both students didn’t use the pen. pen

Prime’s current welcome gift is a Tee shirt, Lanyard, and pen.

  • Support was a big thing that was mentioned. Whether it was from students or faculty, positive or negative

  • There was also a lack of self-care and emotional and physical well-being at the prime.

Design Concepts

using what I learned from my research interviews I came up with three different options for new welcome gift

Sketch Wireframes

Low fidelity digital wireframes

A main feature across all three designs is a study break time. Breaks are important when studying and come with a lot of benefits. And when the time is up, they will suggest some positive break ideas. This would help Prime students focus on self-care.

DESIRABILITY survey

To see what design concept I should move forward with, I made a Google survey with a brief overview of each design and sent it off to current students.

Results showed that students preferred the desk lamp compared to the speaker and water bottle

Physical Prototyping

I then went forward with creating a low-fidelity physical prototype. We did this to further the design process and help with user testing.

Evaluate

I conducted three user tests lasting 15 minutes. I wanted to gain insights about:

  • the usability of the lamp

  • opinions on keys features

  • desirability

  • flaws in the design

  • how meaningful the gift is

Methods used

  • directed storytelling

  • prototyping

  • user testing

  • think aloud testing

  • AEIOU famework

I found out that students loved the idea. An interesting thing I found out was that even though all students rated the usability high, 3/3 users initially did not know how to use some basic functions of the lamp.

Pitch Presentation

Using everything I learned from my project, I created a pitch presentation to persuade Prime to select my desk lamp idea. I decided to focus on the key features of the lamp. First, there was a study break timer to remind students to take a healthy break. Next was the SAD lamp function. Being locked inside all day studying in Minnesota makes it hard to see the sun, which is vital to everyone.

Conclusion

I am very happy with what I came up with. I think it would be interesting to design a box for the prototype that would explain how to use some key functions of the lamp so users would know how to use it immediately. Next, I would like to make the prototype higher fidelity and conduct more research.