New Student Welcome Gift: Laptop Bag with Detachable Campus Key Fob
The Design Process: Research and Reporting | Hand-Sketched and Digitized Concepts | Low-Fidelity Prototyping | Testing and Reporting | High-Fidelity Prototyping | Manufacturing and Distribution
School stakeholders were in need of a new, more appropriate welcome gift for a particular group of students to replace an obsolete water bottle that had been given to new students in the past. AEIOU and Heuristic Analysis were performed and it was determined that a water bottle is not the most meaningful, useful or personal gift for these students. Therefore, I created a design concept of a student-centric laptop bag by using Participant Observation, Concept Design and Concept Testing. A low-fidelity prototype was created and it was then evaluated using a Test Script while watching and listening to a selection of students interact with the prototype. Based upon this, as well as further research outlined below, additional improvements will be made.
Here's my Concept Design, or "Style Tile" for the laptop bag. I created three different projects and this was the winner as a result of Dot Voting.
Concept Design
This was a super fun challenge for me! I had a very short deadline for creating three separate ideas, any of which might be brought to fruition. I always knew that I work well under pressure, but my creativity under a time crunch was brought to a new level here. I also drew up concepts for headphones and a canteen.
Personalization options were extremely important to me to further the gift's meaningfulness and value.
A closer view of the bag design that I sketched for my concept.
Hand Sketched Concept
As a result of Participant Observation, I noticed several components that would be particularly useful to students, such as the main padded laptop compartment, a small section for a few important papers, a pocket for accessories and a detachable key ring to keep track of a campus key fob. This final feature was added due to the large number of students I observed getting locked out of certain corridors and needing to then wait for assistance getting in.
Not surprisingly, the key fob holder was a huge hit among test participants and quickly became one of their favorite features.
I visited Leonardo's Basement to create my prototype using their variety of supplies and tools.
Prototyping
This was an amazing experience for me, as I had to work outside of my comfort zone a bit. I envisioned the bag made of a soft, padded fabric - none of which was available at Leonardo's. I was forced to use materials on hand and to think outside the box (pun intended) by using an old slide reel box for the bones of my laptop bag.
Above are images of my low-fidelity prototype.
L-R: the front view of the bag, inside view with accordion pocket visible, back view with accessories pocket, key fob detail
A challenge I faced during testing was that the bag was made of non-representative materials compared to my idea and what the final iteration of the design should be, so I've decided to conduct Flexible Modeling testing by providing Users with small-scale representations of the components of the bag, each in multiple fabrics of different weights, and asking them to arrange these pieces as they would prefer that the bag be designed.
As an extension of this work, I've proposed a plan to conduct additional research (as seen above and to the right) and finally, the next step will be moving into the production and manufacturing stage if all is well once this research plan is complete.
It is important to keep in mind the main goal throughout this process: to ensure that students are provided a high-quality welcome gift that is meaningful, personal, useful and innovative.
