ChompShop
Consistently engage and connect users
Role
UX Strategist, Co-lead
Timeline
March - June 2024
Team
Digital Strategy Team: 1 Co-Lead, 2 UX Designers, 1 Visual Designer
Overview
Chompshop, previously InvenTABLE, is a kid-safe cardboard-cutting power tool startup with over 1 million Kickstarter backing, and now Shark Tank backing (aired 11/15/2024!).
Co-founders and MS:IPD alumni Kauai and Max consulted us to amp up the digital aspect of their product. My task includes co-leading the team with research, strategy, and design directions, and spearheading the landing page website creation.
Problem
As a physical one-time purchase product, ChompShop faces the problem of a lack of community and engagement --- how do you keep the fun going strong after users have purchased the product?
Solution
Inspired by the founders' visions and in-depth user research, we aim to introduce a club membership, an online community for ChompShop to consistently engage users and reach to more potential users.
Breaking it Down
The client's initial prompt was simple: creating a community for ChompShop (InvenTABLE) users. After understanding the co-founders' wants and desires, we further talked to some users or people who have close contact with kids that use the product, deeply diving into the question: what does a community actually mean?
We talked with 3 makerspace leaders, 4 parents, and 2 teachers, where we learned what they value in a community:
Hearing and observing the overarching emphasis on in-person mode and consistent engagement, as well as needs and desires surrounding support for learning facing various kids and parents, we wonder, in consideration of the ChompShop product as a one-time-purchase physical product:
How do we bring an in person and consistently engaging experience to all kid and adult ChompShop users across the globe?
Co-designing Workshop
By hosting workshops with kids and testing hypotheses that we formulated according to our insights! We hosted a total of 7 workshops at a makerspace, a school, and in our design studio with 32 kids and 4 parents.
At the workshop, we explored 6 themes:
So what do the kids value? We found that from their perspective, they engage, find their community enticing, and find motivations in different ways:
What's next?
Combining the parents and professional makerspace leaders perspectives with the kids' perspective, we decided to approach the prompt in an integrated way:
Introducing the ChompShop Inventor Club,
A membership that bridges the gap between in-person making with remote learning in a way that prolongs engagement from a one-time experience to a lifetime one.
It aims to transform beginner builders into skilled inventors by offering in-person workshops in their communities and a personalized learning curriculum available on their website. After users have mastered the basics, they can become Inventor-Certified where they can teach workshops to other builders, submit designs to invenTABLE to create new templates, and explore advanced projects in different industries and careers.
Design Concepts
In an effort to introduce the membership to users, we designed a marketing landing page to encourage users to join the ChompShop ecosystem and become lifetime ChompShop users. We designed surrounding the following themes:
Official Inventor Club landing website:
Style and Design System
As a group we determined the style of the Inventor Club website, which follows the original Inventor Website typography and color choice plus a 3D and 2D graphics integration --- a reference to the kids's learning process from 2D to 3D, and at the same time appealing to the potential users.
I spearheaded the design system following Materials Design and WCAG guidelines.
How will this help kids?
Inventor Club program grows with the main user group, kids. They can start using the device at a young age with little building skills. As they level up through our gamified design, they gain confidence and skills, and eventually become inventors with access to career-oriented projects. We are able to teach kids newfound skills, solve real-world problems through in-person workshops, and advance in career-related pursuits.
To kids, ChompSaw becomes more than a useful power tool but also a companion.
How will this help ChompShop?
The Inventors Club helps ChompShop achieve 2 purposes: (1) Fostering mentorship and volunteership amongst kids and local organizations (e.g. Penn clubs), (2) Providing opportunities for teachers/makerspace leaders to try out the product
Thus, we establish a self-sustaining volunteer-mentor program to retain users while expanding reach to other organizations, at the same time solidifying the brand image.
Through program workshops we help InvenTABLE move from individual purchasers to larger institutions that could purchase in bulk quantities.
The landing page itself and the Inventor Club website will also display more incentives to becoming a subscriber to their monthly box subscription. It will also subtly promote invenTABLE add-ons throughout the website and templates.
Next Steps
1. Determine what features are most revenue-impacting and interesting to our client and build those out fully
2. Get more volunteers in the loop to spread the word about InvenTABLE to schools, libraries, and makerspaces around Philadelphia. Already created a relationship with the Startup Initiative Foundation to supply us withvolunteers and have established relationships with Cupola Academy who would love to have us host more workshops.
With the Inventor Club Program,
we are able to inspire the next generation of builders.
