The StackPad
Understanding how to create meaningful gifts.
Project Background
The StackPad is a customizable mousepad with a variety of different shortcuts to programs printed on it, and also includes several hotkeys for quick access to specific programs and websites that Fullstack students at Prime Digital Academy frequently use. By equipping new students with a usable tool that provides important information to them upfront, Prime can help reduce the learning curve of entering a challenging program.
Role
UX Designer | UX Researcher
Client
Prime Digital Academy
Observational AEIOU Research, Design Concepts, Desirability Surveys, Low-Fidelity Physical Prototyping, User Prototype Evaluations
Methods & Tools
Key Deliverables
Context
Prime Digital Academy has been providing a branded T-shirt and pen to its full-stack development students as a welcome gift when they arrive on campus. However, upon review Prime posed the questions: Are these gifts meaningful to incoming students? How can we update this gift package to better reflect our values?
With these questions in mind, the main priority was to conduct preliminary research to get a better understand what Fullstack students might consider a meaningful gift, as well as how their daily routines might align with Prime’s values (or how their needs might not be met according to those values).
What makes a gift meaningful?
Above: The current Prime gift package (shirt, pen, nametag, fob)
Right: Prime Digital Academy’s List of Values
Research
I began my research by observing one of the fullstack cohort’s presentations and engaging in both the fly-on-the-wall and participant observation methods, using the AEIOU Framework to guide my observations during the presentations. This helped lay the foundation and gave me a glimpse into the daily routines of the fullstack students and provided insights into they valued. In addition to this, I also participated in a session of moderated interviews with several fullstack students and asked them to reflect on their impressions of the current gift package, and some of the responses can be read below.
Observation Methods
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“I would only wear the shirt if I thought it would help me get a job.””
Prime Fullstack Student A
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“I have never worn the shirt because it's too small and I can’t fit in it.”
Prime Fullstack Student B
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“I really wasn’t expecting anything, so getting anything is nice.”
Prime Fullstack Student C
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“I kind of really hate this color of blue that they made the shirt and wish it was a different color.”
Anonymous and Unrelated UX Designer
Key Insights
Community was the most important value according to fullstack students
Many students are changing careers
Some students don’t have backgrounds in tech or coding
Some students had never used Mac computers prior to enrolling at Prime
Heavy workload, very little or non-existent self-care routines for many students
The design process flow for this project.
Design Concepts & User Surveys
In summary. the research indicated that there was a high stress, high learning curve due to varied backgrounds and low self-care among students, and the current gift package Prime has doesn’t seem to have long lasting impact on their time in the program. With these insights in mind, I created three completely different design concepts focused on the different points of emphasis that students had brought up in the research and interviews:
The Prime Pack, custom backpack to acknowledge the heavy physical and mental load on the students
The Energy Balancer, a multi device charger to help to maintain their work/life balance
The StackPad, which is a mousepad that contains a number of different shortcuts for MacOS, and relevant programs, buttons for specific programs that the fullstack students use, and a section to provide reminders to stretch and perform self-care
After sending a survey to several fullstack students, asking them to select and rank their favorite concepts from 1 to 3, the results were surprisingly as split as it could possibly be. However, the StackPad mousepad slightly edged out the win.
Prototyping
Travelling to Leonardo’s Basement, a local crafts workshop in Minneapolis, I began translating the proposed features into something tangible and tactile for them to interact with.
I went into the physical design process with several considerations in mind:
The StackPad should be a desk length mousepad, so students could lay it out on their workspace and place their computer and mouse on it
Should be portable, to not limit it solely to something that you could only use at Prime
The shortcuts are the main feature so they should be visible at all times
From Concept to Reality
Testing
Three Full-Stack Prime students participated in short 10 minute interviews, during which I had several objectives:
Gather feedback on the placement and arrangement of sections
Gain an understanding of what specific things were difficult at first
Learn more about the kinds of backgrounds and skills full-stack students have
Gather feedback on whether or not they would consider this gift meaningful?
Impressions
Findings
In almost every metric, the 3 Full-Stack students were unanimously interested in the idea of the StackPad, but the more surprising part was that although each one spoke about the different features of the concept, each one emphasized different parts and explained why those specifically were important and meaningful for them:
The first interviewee specifically liked the right section of the pad with the programmable hotkeys, and provided numerous ways that they could envision it helping their workflow
The second, said the self-care reminders were the most important section to them, and that they would like it if the idea included a timer to track their routine
The third said that they were new to MacOS and coding when they started at Prime, so the shortcuts would have been the most helpful as a new student
Meaningful?
“I don’t own anything like this, so I would definitely be interested in this and this is something that I would use it both at home and wherever I work.”
“I would really like it if there were spots specifically for post-it notes and maybe if it also had a spot for a coaster or cupholder.”
“This is something I wish that I had, and is very similar to something that I thought about buying when I started attending Prime.”
Conclusion
Students enjoyed the idea of something more useful, that also helped in their learning
The Full-Stack students often work remotely, so having something useful both at home (or wherever they happen to be working), as well as Prime was a big positive consideration for them
It was appreciated that it felt like someone was thinking of them at the start of their learning process
The StackPad was well received and was unanimously considered something that students would use at any place they wanted to work