The Lunch Module
A Physical Concept Brought To Life
Can mean so many things to us. We sometimes take it for granted, but when you take a chug of that that amazing liquid encased inside its plastic (metal or glass) contents we feel refreshed, rejuvenated, and in most cases rehydrated. Water bottles serve a purpose, they fill a need, and can give us a sense of individuality.
But what happens when we don’t feel those feelings of elation? When the bottle that we have is too small to really make it worth while, it leaks making you question what the point of this bottle was in the first place, it’s been designed for really only one type of liquid, it looks generic and elicits no character, or the great fashion faux pas it looks like everyone else’s.
Well, when the full stack cohort of Prime Academy arrived on their first day of class, with the feelings of joy, excitement, and nervousness as they peered into the unknown and uncertainty of a new career, they were greeted with a gift from the academy, a water bottle. This gift was was supposed to give those students a message one of hope, welcoming, and appreciation for taking the leap, and choosing Prime to guide them to success. At at least that was what was supposed to happen.
The Problem
The water bottle was not being received well by the full stack students.
The current bottle design was no longer being produced
The Proposal
Investigate why the bottle was not being received well.
Design a new gift for the students based off that research.
The Solution
The water bottle seemed to not be the best gift for new full stack students.
In it’s stead the focus turned to designing a lunch box, or more aptly named Lunch Module.
Tools/Methodology:
Participant Observation / Heuristic Analysis / Conceptual Design / Silent Critique / Hand Sketch / Physical Prototype
Prime cafeteria before lunch rush.
Research
In order to get to know the target user more, I sat down and got to talking with some of the full stack students in the newest cohort. Unbeknownst to them, I was looking for several key factors which were objects, interactions, surroundings, and the interactions between and within them.
Prime Academy supplies their students with water glasses, coffee mugs, a dishwasher for those items to be washed in, and several refrigerators for storage. Something else interesting that I found was that a lot of the student users had brought their own lunches with them in containers that were stacked high in the fridges. It was a bit of a mess in the refrigerators as I could barely tell whose container was whose.
The full stack desks and work spaces are limited, being almost completely taken up with school materials, notebooks, pens, papers, computers, and computer accessories.
Lastly I noted that the unity achieved from being around the same group of people day in and day out had not yet been established which lead to most of the students feeling anxious.
Heuristic Analysis
The next step was to test the current water bottle to see what its restrictions and limitations may have been. To do this as accurately as I could, I preformed a Heuristic analysis to uncover the severity of the violations according to Jacob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for Interface Design.
After testing the bottle I found the three biggest issues for users were:
Spilling - When the bottle was full, and fell over the top was very unstable and had a high risk of coming off.
Mobility - The tab on the lid could be caught and pushed up too easily allowing for the whole top to come off and the contents of the bottle to spill out. This could potentially result in a huge mess for the user during a commute.
Hot Liquids - The bottle was only designed to hold cold liquids. Coffee, tea, or anything hot made the bottle too hot to hold, which was a huge problem for the user, as this created limitations on what the bottle could be used for.
Ideate
Once I identified the user pain points it was time to begin designing a prototype, but where to begin? I took a look back at the cafeteria space during lunch and noticed two objects there were prevalent, coffee mugs and water glasses. This got me thinking, should I be redesigning for yet another water bottle? Something that the students can go out and buy on their down, and yet most of them clearly preferred to use what’s already provided to them by? Something that almost every cafeteria in the nation already supplies to their students and employees?
I took an even closer look and there was something monumental that suddenly dawned on me. I asked what is the one thing that these student’s didn’t want to spend money on, and that was lunches. Most of the places around Prime Academy are around 10.00 dollars average per lunch, that means it would cost the student 50+ a week to have lunch, which is why the majority of the student users had lunch containers with food they had brought from home.
Conceptualize
I took an even closer look and there was something monumental that suddenly dawned on me. I asked what is the one thing that these student’s didn’t want to spend money on, and that was lunches. Most of the places around Prime Academy are around 10.00 dollars average per lunch, that means it would cost the student 50+ a week to have lunch, which is why the majority of the student users had lunch containers with food they had brought from home.
I began to think about the initial designs of what the lunch module prototype would look like. Once I had received feedback from silent and direct critiques, I a clear direction of how to turn my concept sketches into a physical prototype.
Prototype
Once concepts were picked and theorized, it was time to bring the idea to life. I traveled to a local creative space known as Leonardo’s Basement located in the twin cities. Here I had about an hour and a half to try to build my concept from scratch using just the materials that the space provided. I swung into action, and knew the prototype needed to be sturdy, and as accurate to its design portrayal as possible, so I decided to build it out of the wood scraps and random door accessories that were lying around the shop.
Before I knew it, I had build the Lunch Module, including its removable ice pack.
The next day it was time to put the module to the test, a usability test that is. I sat down with three people and a prepared script and got to work. The end results could not have been more exciting. With quotes like “The lunch box seems cool, as well as safe”, and “I would definitely use this on a daily basis”, I can’t wait to see what the future of the lunch box will hold for future Full Stack students.