Access Accessories
A welcome gift for navigating Prime Digital Academy
The Context
A new way to welcome Prime full-stack engineering students
Prime Digital Academy is a technology training school in Minneapolis that offers intensive full-stack engineering and user experience design programs for students looking to start careers in tech. Prime currently provides a welcome gift of a branded T-shirt and pen, along with a lanyard, name tag, and campus fob to new full-stack engineering students. But Prime stakeholders are looking to revamp this welcome gift to make it more useful for students and reflective of Prime’s culture.
I was tasked with…
researching what’s working and not working with the current gift
designing and proposing a new welcome gift that’s more meaningful, practical, and aligned with Prime’s values
Using insights from my user research on the current gift, I put together several design concepts for a new gift. I used data from a desirability survey and interviews with students to refine and evaluate an initial prototype of one of the gift ideas: Access Accessories. After evaluative interviews with users, I proposed to Prime that they adopt Access Accessories as their new welcome gift for full-stack engineering students.
Role
UX Researcher & Designer
Dates
June 3 - 9, 2024
Methods & Tools
Exploratory research, participant observation, evaluative interviews, design concepts, physical prototyping
The Problem
Assessing the current welcome gift
The current welcome gift at Prime consists of:
A Prime branded T-shirt
A Prime branded pen
A lanyard with a name tag and fob to access Prime’s campus
“What pen?'"
When asked about the current gift, students were unimpressed, rating its overall practicality at a 3.5/7 and overall meaningfulness as a 3.5/7.
T-shirt
Almost every student I talked with mentioned that the T-shirts had inaccurate sizing, making them practically unwearable. Several students also disliked the T-shirt’s color and the prominence of the Prime logo, commenting that it seemed more useful as an advertising tool for Prime than as a gift to students.
Pen
None of the interviewed students remembered receiving a pen at all, clearly demonstrating its lack of impact for them.
Lanyard, name tag, & fob
Students found this to be more of a necessity than a gift, and they found the name tag to be lacking in quality. I also noticed few students actually wearing the lanyard, so it was evidently not the most useful design, despite the fob having a clear use.
The Users
Understanding full-stack students’ experience
To better understand what would actually be practical and meaningful for full-stack engineering students at Prime, I took a step back to learn more about their experience as Prime students.
I observed full-stack students during the class day on campus, taking note of the objects they used, how they interacted with the spaces and each other, and any pain points they seemed to run into in their day-to-day tasks. I also gathered data from student interviews.
Prime is intense…and student support is a key aspect of their success
The biggest theme that emerged when observing and speaking with students was how challenging and all-consuming Prime’s full-stack program was. They had limited time for self-care and found that balancing class work with life outside of Prime was difficult to manage.
I also noticed the importance of support from staff and classmates for students. Students detailed times they had felt supported as well as areas they thought support was lacking.
I reported these findings to Prime in an exploratory research report (see snippets below). And I focused on these two main themes of the intensity of the program and the importance of support in my new gift design concepts.
Student quote about the lack of time for self care during Prime's full-stack engineering program
Key findings about students' experience from observation and interviews
Summary page from the exploratory research report I did for Prime
The Design
Design concepts for a new welcome gift
Based on my exploratory research, I created three design concepts for a new welcome gift for full-stack students:
“Access Accessories” - items to help with the financial and logistical barriers of getting to and accessing Prime’s space
“Care Collection” - items to support students’ self-care and comfort
“Identity Hodgepodge” - items focused on helping students establish their unique identity on campus and build community with classmates
Design concept #1: "Access Accessories"
Design concept #2: "Care Collection"
Design concept #3: "Identity Hodgepodge"
Students clearly wanted the basics
I initially expected students to be most excited about the Care Collection and Identity Hodgepodge gifts, since those were directly aimed at supporting with the lack of time for self care and the community-building that I’d seen and heard students focusing on in my research. But when I gathered student preferences from a desirability survey, I was surprised to find that most students picked Access Accessories as their first choice (6/8 respondents).
I realized that the care and community needs I was trying to address with the other two gifts were secondary to students’ more basic desire: eliminating barriers to showing up in the first place.
So I moved forward with prototyping and evaluating Access Accessories as the proposed new gift.
Creating a physical prototype of Access Accessories
To give students a more tactile sense of the Access Accessories gift in evaluative interviews, I created low-fidelity physical prototypes of the items.
Access Accessories Items
A sleek backpack for carrying supplies
A set of fobs for free access to the Prime campus, as well as the building’s bike room and gym
A bus pass and/or parking pass (depending on students’ transportation preferences), paid for by Prime
Evaluation
How would students respond to the Access Accessories gift?
I completed three user interviews with students to evaluate the desirability and effectiveness of the Access Accessories gift idea.
Evaluation Goals
To understand how practical this gift would be for full-stack students (especially in comparison to the original gift)
To gain insights about how meaningful the students find this gift (especially in comparison to the original gift)
To identify strengths and weaknesses in this gift’s concept and design
Students found the Accessories gift to be significantly more practical and meaningful than the current gift
Students were shown the initial design concept as well as the low-fidelity prototype of the Access Accessories gift. While they rated the current gift with an average of 3.5/7 on both practicality and meaningfulness, they gave Access Accessories an average of 6.8/7 for practicality and a 6/7 for meaningfulness, showing a clear preference compared to the current gift.
All three students said they would use all the items in this gift. They said it would make them feel “amazing” and “supported,” and that it would suggest Prime wanted to “streamline success” for students by making sure their “pain points [were] taken care of.”
A gift that reflects Prime’s values
During interviews with students, an interesting theme emerged: students did not expect Prime to be willing to provide support with things like a backpack to carry supplies or the cost of transportation. I repeatedly heard comments like “it seemed like I was expected to do that on my own.” So they were pleasantly surprised at the possibility of Prime providing support outside of academics, saying it would indicate that “Prime is open to hearing about those things.”
This finding indicated to me that the Access Accessories gift would intentionally make Prime more accessible, inclusive, and supportive, showing that Prime cares about its students’ well-being—not just their academic success. This impact would reflect Prime’s stated values of “including everyone” and “practicing empathy” in particular, proving that Prime brings these values into its actions, not just its language.
The Solution
Prime Digital Academy should adopt Access Accessories as their new welcome gift
Based on students’ positive responses to the Access Accessories gift, I moved forward with proposing that Prime adopt this gift as their new welcome gift for full-stack engineering students. I presented this proposal alongside my research findings to Prime stakeholders.
See a selection of slides from my presentation to Prime stakeholders below.
Next Steps
Implementing the Access Accessories gift
Some considerations
Cost - does Prime have the funds to pay for gym access, bus passes, and parking passes for all its students?
Quality - since most students show up to Prime with some kind of backpack or bag to carry their supplies, some students emphasized that a backpack would need to be high quality to be worth using—not just more “Prime swag”
Branding - students were split on whether they would want to see the Prime logo on the backpack. One student said he wouldn’t use the backpack if it had the logo, and others didn’t mind. But based on their feedback about the T-shirt, keeping the logo small (if it’s included at all) would help keep the backpack from seeming more like an advertising tool for Prime than a real gift for students.
Choice - students mentioned that not everyone would necessarily have a use for these gifts (e.g. students within walking distance wouldn’t use the bus pass or parking pass), so having an opt-in/out option for some of these gifts might be a way to save money and not give students extraneous items
Further exploration
Given that this gift is focused mainly on practicality, there is an opportunity to explore ways to make it more meaningful for students. Further research and development of the gift could focus on this goal.
*Prime Digital Academy campus photo courtesy of Creative Color Studio