Clara's Reflective Journal

This is my reflective journal for the design processes I'm going through.

[clarasjournal]

Digital or physical social engineering focus

Hola, this week I've been gathering a lot of data, both informal and formal - about social engineering attacks. A majority of the information I stumble across is about digital social engineering, which are the usual scams, such as phishing, catfishing, etc, through social media or e-mail, or links/misleading GUI's. But I think Tony had intended for me to scope digital social engineering out, and focus on the physical social engineering attacks that are aimed towards getting unauthorized access to a building/space, through tailgating or the like.

I've found a lot of information and I generally think everything is interesting. I think there's a lot to digital social engineering, and maybe a combination between digital and physical social engineering is the most effective type of this type of deception? I mean, what if the social engineer initiates contact through digital means, and gains trust through this type of media - and then proceeds with the attack physically?

Another concern I have so far is how much interaction design plays a part in this topic. I want interaction design to be the absolute centre, and I think there is a lot of interaction design to this type of social engineering. The user has to interact with the system in order to let a social engineer in. So what openings do I have there? Do I design the system so the social engineer too has to interact with the system? And how?

A lot of thoughts and a lot spinning in my head right now. I'm not worried, just thoughtful. I hope it'll turn out good.

[clarasjournal]

New course: Thesis prep

I accidentally stopped writing out my reflections on here because I got too caught up in the project I was trusted with. I kept them paper-based instead. But now a new course has started, a 5 week long course to help us students prepare for the upcoming thesis that will be the last thing we do before we graduate. I have chosen the topic of designing for "anti-social engineering", and will conduct my thesis at Axis Communications. Tony will be my on-site thesis mentor and I'm looking forward to all the competent help and suggestions he will contribute with.

I'm not sure how much I will be able to write reflections on here, but I'll keep the option open for myself to write in a very free format on here - about reflections I feel gnawing at me or immature ideas and thoughts that I need to write out in order to understand.

But until then: information gathering.

[clarasjournal]

Week 10

This week has been the launch of my own internship project where I will try to follow a proper design process, prototype and create something! This week has been incredibly productive and valuable in terms of me understanding the context of my project and what I have in front of me. I've been sketching out ideas as they arise both on paper and on adobe XD, I've been sketching to understand the subject I'm tackling better and I've held four meetings with stakeholders, colleagues and users of access control systems.

During the week I held two of the meetings physically, and both of these meetings involved a whiteboard. This became a game changer, and I thought it was a super interesting factor to enhance the meetings. I've only held digital meetings before, due to corona, and never understood the value of face to face meetings involving a whiteboard before I experienced the difference. The whiteboard acted as a possibility for the participant to explain and develop thoughts and ideas through visualization and free-hand structures. The whiteboard also came to act as an idea generator, because when the participant visually had their ideas and thoughts in front of them they could take a step back and look at them twice more and spin off of them. This proved to be a great enhancement to my interviewing methods, because it made it more interesting, clear and fun both for me and my participant. My interviewing methods were also a bit different now comparing to my earlier interviews. I had managed to jot down open and broad questions that somehow still were specific enough for my participant to talk a lot, freely and long about the subject they were asked about. They often came up with own follow-up answers without me having to probe them in any way, because they did so themselves. This could also be a consequence of me letting the participant explain rather than just answer. I often didn't even need to look in my questionnaire, because I was able to come up with follow-up questions on the matter they were speaking of within the boarders of what I wanted to get out of the interview. All in all, the participant (in most cases) talked 90% of the time while I talked 10%, and I see this as a huge achievement. It has a lot to do with making the participant feel comfortable and interesting, I think. I've also realized that it is often easier to conduct interviews with more than one person, because then the two or more participants can discuss matters together, with each other, which often leads to deeper and more interesting reflections/discussions.

This week I also had a session with the QA Haris, where he helped me set up a user journey. I had defined all the steps I could think of within this area of the system and he helped me place them in the correct order that the user would go through them. Then we discussed what types of obstacles the users would potentially run into when going through this journey, which actually revealed a few use cases for him to work on as a QA! This was super interesting because it made me realize that UX should be working closely to QA, not just because of what insights we as UX-designers can get from QA, but how we can be able to help them.

This week has been very productive in the sense that I'm moving forward very quickly within this new internship project that I'll be devoting all my time to from now on. I've managed to turn very many rocks and start a discussion with myself about what problems I can find and work on. I still come up with more and more questions. I'm at a diverging stage of the process, so this is only natural and actually very exciting. I find more and more details and issues that will help me come to a better, more holistic, solution when the time comes for me to start converging. My interviews have helped me see the topic from multiple perspectives, and I'm looking forward to merging these into one unified product. The week has been slightly confusing, with all these new perspectives, arising issues and unfinished thoughts - but this is all part of the process and an essential part of better understandings. An issue I've run into is that I often find myself sketching on solutions way earlier than I should, and have to drag myself back to where I'm supposed to be in the design process. I need to put brakes on myself because otherwise I will end up in a situation where I work on the wrong things and realize this when it's already too late to go back and conduct proper research. Now is the time for me to really dwell, diverge and emerge into my research! I have to practice being comfortable in the unknowing!

[clarasjournal]

Week 9

As the morning light disappears more and more, melancholy drags over me – nothing new under the sun. But this time it’s not just the disappearing light that’s wearing me down, it’s that I won’t be seeing my two go-to colleagues as much as before. It has made me realize how important good colleagues are in a workplace. They are your relief – in terms laughing together, joking around, letting go of work thoughts if only for five minutes, sharing life stories, thoughts, and opinions with someone you trust and value. They make you feel comfortable around colleagues and people you haven’t met before, force you out of your shell to connect with others, and encourage you to learn more and ask those questions you’re afraid to ask. Good colleagues are easy to ask for help. They have your back, they see your struggles and they are there for you to vent and patch you back up when you’re feeling weak, stupid, and worthless. All right, this sob story is starting to look like no other, I’ll stop reflecting on the emotional impact of good colleagues before I start sounding like anyone is dying. On a brighter note, still regarding good colleagues – they have also proved to provide great professional benefits. I’ve gained so much new knowledge from finding a good colleague in a QA employee. Being from different educational and professional backgrounds we have done a lot of knowledge sharing, I’ve been able to learn about what a QA does, provides with and knows, and I’ve been able to share my take on UX from an interaction designer’s perspective. Coming to him with UX related tasks/issues he has been helpful in giving me a QA’s perspective, making me see things in a new light. Talking to him about my UX work has also forced me to adjust and adapt my communication about this topic to suit someone who doesn’t have any experience in the matter. To discuss my thoughts with him I must first explain what I mean with certain things and almost educate him on UX matters, which forces me to think through and reflect on my own knowledge of UX – I feel as though I’m learning through teaching. Connecting on a personal level with someone with a different role than myself has also sparked my curiosity for knowing more about other roles. I find it interesting to hear about what he does as a QA and it’s an easy way of learning more about how things work out at a workplace, rather than the quite closed environment of the university where everyone I speak to studies the same thing as me.

Nevertheless, this week has unfortunately been the gloomiest week out of all weeks I’ve spent here so far. It has to do with multiple things, such as the weather getting darker, colder, and wetter – but also with uncovering that being a designer in a hardware focussed company isn’t all roses and sunshine all the time. For example, we face having to jusitfy our work, and some strategies that work very well for hardware development might not work as well for design development. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t argue for your designs, this is an essential skill that constantly needs to be practiced when being a designer, but having to educate people of other roles on why we’re here might not be a thing most other roles have to do…? As I’m writing this I’ve gotten some distance to this week so now it doesn’t seem so bad anymore, but I want to highlight that even though I’m at a great internship place there will always be ups and downs! And I don’t want to diminish the downs, the glooms, because these times often reveal what you value and cherish. Without darkness you can’t see the light or what is it that Dumbledore so well puts it?

On Monday my fellow internship colleagues presented their drafts for me to give feedback and critique on, which went very well. Just as my education has helped me receive critique and feedback, it has also helped me produce and provide it. I know what to look for when I strive to give as valuable feedback as I can, and I know how to present it without attacking the person I’m giving the feedback to. I have read through the conditions and learning objectives that we are up against and drew from these when I gave my feedback to my colleagues. Some of the things I looked for was structure, content, clarity, and coherency. I thought Karin had a very well described process that she had experienced, and which had helped her conduct her work at the web bureau she’s positioned at. What I thought she could develop further was a description and explanation of how she’s used her skills that she’s gotten from school and what/how she’s gained new skills at her workplace. Agustín and Chloé are both at the same internship, so they presented together, and I thought they had covered a great deal of motivating their project and made it interesting to listen to. They had also well-developed descriptions of their skills and how they’ve gained and used them in relation to school and work. Chloé described well how, through the internship, she’s found out what she is more inclined towards in terms of UX and interaction design work. This was an interesting aspect that I find valuable to reflect upon before, during and after the internship and something I will bring with me as well. Their weakness lied in positioning their project in relation to external, adjacent, work. I gave them the advice to elaborate further on contextualizing their project in relation to what other Universities are doing. Placing their work in the context of an external market and project was necessary to meet this learning objective, and I knew that they could fit this into their already well-developed presentation without a doubt.

My work this week resolved a few of the questions I had jotted down last week, and a bunch more arose – which is exciting! I spent a lot of time understanding the current solution of the feature I’ll be working on through sketching, communicating, visualizing, asking for help, and writing out cases a user could be faced with. I also sought out information about adjacent solutions and projects that could be linked with my project. I wrote down 4 research questions to draw from when I hold more interviews and meetings with stakeholders and users. I’m fond of research questions because they keep me in line when I accidentally stray away from the path that I’ve set out for myself. I also appreciate the difference between research questions and interview questions – research questions being for me only and explaining what type of knowledge/insights I’m searching for, and interview questions being adapted and optimised for the person I’m interviewing to understand and interpret. The data I gather from the answers of the interview questions can only then, after my interpretations and mapping/pattern-makings, be used to answer my research questions.

I spoke to the manager of the UX team I’m included in about the presentation I held for my two managers Maliheh and Tony, and she thought it would be a good idea to hold this presentation for the UX team as well. So, I translated the presentation and held it for my UX colleagues on Thursday morning. It went very well, and we had a fruitful discussion afterwards over coffee and a sandwich. We spoke about the importance of reflection and how it should be an integrated part of design work.

On Thursday me, Tony and the product specialist of access control discussed the important relationship between UX designer and product specialist. It’s a fantastic opportunity to discuss proactive work and error-prevention with the product specialist before dealing with the tasks ahead – to get a holistic and user-centred perspective before setting out to designing and solving. A product specialist is often more technically involved than the UX designer, which can be incredibly helpful to come forth with the golden way – a solution that is both technically functional and user-friendly. They also have a broader perspective on what types of user roles we have and what they need to be able to conduct their work as efficiently and smooth as possible. We concluded with that the product specialist is somewhere between a design colleague and an internal stakeholder.

[clarasjournal]

Week 8

Me and Tony have discussed my internship project further and I’ve understood that this is a chance for both me and him to go about beyond what is expected and really let our creative minds run free and do something crazy with it! Of course, I’m still allowed to please the product owners and internal stakeholders and strive for something that they can implement right away, but I feel encouraged to do something wild and crazy. I’m very happy with this freedom I have with Tony as my mentor because I’m already confident I’ve shown the company that I can be an asset through helping him with tasks that have been implemented already. I’m also completely on board with not focussing on creating something that we think could be implemented right away, because when my internship ends it’s ultimately up to Tony to take charge, and I don’t want to leave him with a burden when I’m no longer there to explain, fix and take accountability for what I’ve designed. We decided it’s better for me to create a future version of the feature to act as an inspiration for Tony in his work rather than something he must defend for and implement himself. I also look forward to what types of prototyping opportunities this futuristic version has to offer! Currently we’re thinking of prototyping with voice activation/control, maybe some form of machine learning, and maybe something physical as well!

This week has uncovered a lot of confusion for me and my project and shown me that I’m currently in the “fuzzy front-end”. I’m not worried about being confused; I know that confusion is the first stage of finding valuable insights. My confusion will form into questions that will lead to interesting conclusions and design opportunities. I’ve already started to jot down some questions that I can have in the back of my head and strive to answer through talking to colleagues, using design methods such as user journeys and of course talking to users and stakeholders.

Seeing that I have not yet “officially” started my own internship project, I’m trying to be all over the place, participating in meetings, stand-ups, and discussions. I’m trying to soak up as much information as possible about all kinds of topics and projects that has to do with access control. I have a few colleagues that are present physically in the office and I’m always trying to catch as much time with them as I can to ask them about what they’re doing and if they can help me with what I’m trying to understand. It’s so valuable to not only be around UX designers as well, I’m around QA (Haris), web developers and project managers. I feel so privileged to be able to be around these types of work roles and gain insights about their everyday work life. This week I had a conversation with Haris about a new feature that Tony is working on, and Haris explained the logic behind it. During this conversation I realised that the experiences I’ve gathered so far at this workplace made me able to critically question aspects of the new feature in a way that made sense and could help enhance the making of this new feature. It’s an empowering type of feeling and I’m very happy to feel as though my time here is valuable for both my personal and professional development. With the knowledge I’ve gained so far, I’ve also been able to question the naming of some things which is probably more for the tech writers/copy writers to decide hehe. But it’s still something that indicate that I’ve grown in my professional work and that I understand more and more about the company and the work that is done here. And in terms of discussing and having conversations with colleagues I want to point out how important this is to grow and gain knowledge. Through discussing ideas and confusions with colleagues I’ve been able to understand and ideate so much quicker and easier than if I would’ve had to keep everything in my head and try to reason with myself.

I’ve started to identify core user pre-requisites that matter for how they must conduct their work, i.e., in what format and in what ways the feature I will be focussing on needs to be. I’m taking the information from my user research and test-site visits and use methods such as personas and user journeys to find patterns and structure the important findings that can lead to informed design decisions. I’ve also been finding ways of connecting my future version of the feature to what currently exists in the system so it will stay consistent and coherent even if it’s a future version that won’t be implemented right away. I’ve found and sketched out interesting connections that I can use to create a more unified and simple solution for the user to use more intuitively and easily. But sometimes I feel like I’m rushing things a bit. I have troubles with staying focussed on the beginning of the design process, I find myself a bit ahead, wanting to solve things before I’ve teased out all the components and important factors that make up the issue in the first hand. But I’m also not really worried about this, not yet at least. I feel like it’s a natural part of having a design process, and it’s also an interesting insight I can bring with me when I present the process I’ve gone through – it’s not always as it should be theoretically. The road is often much messier in practice. Speaking of road, I’ve created a road map that I can share here, even if it'll be a bit censured. I’ll be having this as the underlying process to always have something to fall back on if I stray away too far.

[clarasjournal]

Week 7

Back on my feet again. I began the week with facilitating a co-design session with an internal stakeholder, the product specialist for access control. It was a bit scary since I haven’t done co-design sessions before – at least not alone and not with people who aren’t designers. I asked my UX team on the stand-up that we have each morning if they had any tips for me. One of my colleagues made me aware of that the feature I will be working on might be valuable for the audio department as well, nudging me to maybe take contact with the product specialist of audio as well. We’ll see if I’ll go down that route or not, remembering that I’m an intern for access control, not audio… And I tend to take on a bit too much than what I should. I also got the tip to look back to what service design has to say about co-designing, so I sat down an read a bit about that before I held the session with the product specialist. I ended up preparing a brief 5 min presentation about my visions, the product owners’ visions, and some constraints, then I set up a collaborative board with post-it concept mappings + post-it use cases in case he was up for brainstorming potential use cases. I’m happy with how the presentation turned out, it was clear in conveying what I know I have ahead of me and what’s currently a bit fuzzy. It was when I gave him the link to the collaborative board that I realised I had probably optimised the session for another designer rather than a product specialist. The way of working with post-its and concept maps didn’t really work for him, as he let me know it was too abstract and that he doesn’t really know what to do with all the post-its. He’d preferred a more concrete task he could do or some more concrete questions for him to answer, and as for the tool he’d preferred to draw out his visions rather than write them out. So, we ended up with him sharing his screen while drawing out his visions with a drawing program. I got some insights that I was looking for, but I think the most valuable thing gained from this was the learning of having to adapt and optimise for the person you’re co-designing with to get the most out of the session. I also need to re-think what types of tasks I need to prepare and convey, since this was missing in this session. It’s a fine balance between being too abstract and too concrete. Because I want the participant that I’m co-designing with to come up with novel ideas and ways of doing something, not just completing tasks…

I’ve been sketching out and visualizing what I find tricky to wrap my head around, and I find that this method works very well for me because in doing so I force myself to re-think the information I think I understand, and it is much easier to ask for help with what I don’t understand when I have something visual to refer to. Unfortunately, I can’t share my sketches publicly because they revolve around a project I’m not allowed to share. But the most important part is my reflections, not what I’m doing. I’ve been spending a lot of time pre-starting my own internship project that I will focus solely on from November 1st. This is because I find it very interesting and the more time I spend on it the more I uncover, so I understand now that this will be a quite big project with a lot of issues I will have to tease out.

This week I also found out that my UX audit has come to good use. Tony has checked it and used it to create an informed re-design, and he even used one of my arguments when explaining to stakeholders what needed to be iterated. Being in a practical context of a workplace where I feel that I can make a difference even as an intern feels very accomplishing and exciting.

On Wednesday I held my draft presentation about the workplace, industry, and skills to my fellow internship colleagues Karin, Agustín and Chloé. I received very valuable feedback that helped me create an enhanced version of my presentation before I held it with my mentors Maliheh and Tony. I feel very comfortable around my classmates so I wasn’t nervous for this presentation and what critique and feedback they would come with. Even if I wouldn’t feel comfortable around these people giving me critique, I don’t feel nervous or anxious when I’m up for getting critique. I think the education, interaction design bachelor, has prepared me and my classmates more than enough to have a good relationship with giving and taking design critique and feedback. We’ve been exposed to this from the get-go and I feel like this has been incredibly valuable to get used to, because it’s an absolute necessity to give and take critique at the workplace. Even though you inevitably get attached to your creations and your work you need to be able to separate yourself from it when you’re presenting to stakeholders, colleagues and external people – and open up your mind to let in the critique and make something valuable of it.

[clarasjournal]

Week 6

Getting to know different users has also uncovered the different issues and problems they face with access control systems. What works and what doesn't. The difficulties they face when using these types of systems shouldn't be neglected and ignored - they should rather be highlighted and improved. To create a powerful user experience, the type of user experience Axis wants to invoke, we need to take into account what our users struggle with as well as what they think works smoothly.

As I've been rather sick this week (no corona) I haven't been able to be as productive as I've been the other weeks. Nonetheless, I've been able to read up on methods I want to try out with stakeholders at Axis, one of them being co-design sessions. I've also read up on what Tony has been up to and gotten a brief of how the work towards improving the design process is going.

I've also realized a thing I need to do in order to make my project successful, and that is to collect as much functionalities and flows as possible before starting to visualize my designs. This way I can cut and paste the functionalities into different spaces to figure out what will work best before I settle on anything that doesn't really make sense.

This week I also got the opportunity to dive deeper into the visions of the product owner regarding the project I'm supposed to attack from November 1st. Next week I will counter this stakeholders visions with another internal stakeholders visions, and see what I will end up with. Through diving deeper into the product owners visions I got to know the issues the users face today and the limitations of the system as it is right now. In broad brush strokes I also got to know a bit of what improvements the product owner would like to see. From this meeting I also got a lot of new names that I will benefit from talking to about this project.

[clarasjournal]

Week 5

This week I focused on getting a deeper knowledge into what Axis already has in terms of user research and what information they have gathered on the topic of target user groups. As Axis is a company that strives for economical gains, the sales teams are the teams with most customer contact. The problem is that customer contact doesn't equal user contact, because our customers are distributors of our products, meaning that there is a long line from Axis to end-user. Nevertheless, I was able to find some documentation of the intended target user group and some personas built around this. To get more hands on knowledge I decided to contact a person who had written a lot of the personas documentation. She's a UX lead and she gave me a presentation of the work they have done trying to establish target user groups to design for. One reflection she had made, that I brought with me, was to think about solutions rather than the product/system that will solve the problem the user has. She also made me more aware of what type of users we mostly have, or that we think that we have. I, along with the other UX designers of Axis, think that the more information we have about our actual users, the better. We need to understand the typical users needs, desires and common ways of working in order to create valuable solutions for them.

During a qualitative user interview conducted physically on one of Axis test sites I realized some issues with our system that arises when it's not used by our target user group. This test site was too small to benefit from using our access control system the way it is intended to be used, even though it could be used by them if they had the drive to use it. Even though the research I conducted on this specific test site wasn't about the target user group, I could still see the value of getting to know why someone wouldn't use the system we have on the market right now. It gave me insights of how the system could give a bad experience to the user, and how they might like it better if it was shaped differently, for different types of users. This is something that sparked an interesting thought in me, and I will try to find time to explore this idea further.

Tony has given me insight into the current process of Axis projects, and how he would like to improve this process. For my prototyping project that I will put all my time and effort into from November 1st I will follow his design process as best as I can, since I think it resonates with how I want to be able to work in the future. Tony is in the midst of trying to enlighten different parts of Axis of this process, and it will be very fruitful and exciting to see the results of this mission. It's also interesting to be in the middle of how the process is right now, because even if it isn't ideal, it's valuable for me to see how a real work-life process looks. It's messy at times, frustrating - sure, but valuable and very humbling to see that it's not always green grass and rainbows being a designer in a bigger company. Sometimes you have to elbow your way forward to make other parts (the maybe more skeptical parts) of the company realize the potential and benefits UX design have when it's conducted properly.

Speaking of the prototyping project I will be doing from November 1st, this is something me and Tony have cooked up together with the product owner. When I start this project I will no longer go alongside Tony, and I will not be put in any sharp situations as I have experienced already. I will focus solely on a visionary feature of the access control system, and I will do it in separate steps based on Tonys design process:

research & planning

solution design

design mock-ups

production design

This will result in a functioning prototype that I might be able to show on the internship exhibition, if I get permission from the product owner to show it. In this project I will learn how to create a high abstraction level while still maintaining a conveyance of the system model. Something between skeuomorphism and abstraction. Another exciting aspect of this project is that I will let the research define what exactly will be worth focusing on within this feature. Tony has also given me an advice on how to estimate time: "double the time estimate if you want to do a fine job, triple it if you want to do an excellent job".

Through working at Axis I'm constantly learning about the company and the work we have that's on the market and what's currently in development. Every day I learn something new about Axis and I find it very giving and valuable. It's important for me to not stagnate and stop developing. At Axis I find new learnings all the time and thus it feels like a fruitful place to work at. Here I keep developing skills that has both to do with UX design but also with technical developments.

This week I have had interviews with a diversity of different users, which will be very interesting to dive into when I'm visualizing their similarities and differences in the form of user journeys. Maybe I can uncover valuable insights that can play a big role in how we can improve the system?

[clarasjournal]

Week 4

I've been terrible at posting reflections on here lately, but I've kept my reflections on paper so it's not that I've neglected this task entirely. I've just been extremely busy and this Friday my cold reached it's peak of terribleness. No corona though, so that's good.

After week 3 I was able to help Tony some more with current tasks that he had on his plate, and it felt very valuable to be able to contribute with "real" work. Of course, everything I do on my internship is real work, but this type of work I was able to contribute with now was more urgent and towards a strict deadline. It needed to be done. The work I'm doing otherwise during my internship is more visionary and will help Axis UX a bit further on, in the future.

During the work I contributed with along with Tony that was the more urgent work task, I ran into multiple problems common in big companies like Axis. A bunch of technical issues arose as I came up with ideas of solutions. It was frustrating at times but a really good lesson as well. As UX designers in a hardware and engineer focused company, we need to be able to skillfully compromise. Both designers and engineers have a lot to learn from each other, and only together we'll create the best solutions. The issues I was confronted with, without saying too much, involved inconsistency issues through the developer teams using different types of API depending on wether they were developers of the big windows native system or the web-based plug in. This makes it difficult, maybe even impossible, to make the visuals exactly the same, since they don't share the same coding language. As designers in that position we have to be creative and make the best of what we have. What me and Tony came up with during this week was a quick fix, but it was valuable to me to contribute in a sharp context where we needed something to be done fast, and I also took on the documentation of this and some future ideas of how it should be done when a re-design is due. I got the opportunity to present the solutions to colleagues and stakeholders, both product owner and web developers. As I presented the important contributions to the product owner I also saw the opportunity to present some ideas of future visions for a specific feature of the system. To do this I used Adobe XD to mock up my ideas to make them visual, and it went really well. The product owner thought I was completely in line with their visions, and this made me feel really happy with how far I've come in understanding the workplace and their visions with the system I'm working in. Through working so closely with Tony which has a lot of competence in both interaction design (through being a teacher of interaction design in Malmö for 10+ years) and UX design I learn so much every day and the way I'm able to apply the knowledge onto real contributions is very empowering for me.

This week I also started the work of trying to get in contact with users, test sites and other people that has experience of access control systems. This is a typical example of what I do that will help Axis in the long run, but it's not contributing to a current project or product. To get the most of this user research I prepared some interview questions and thought through what I wanted to get out of the interviews I will hold and the physical meetings I will conduct. This could be questions like "how do you experience x in the system" "how would you like y to behave if you could have it your way?". To dig a bit deeper into how they actually experience the product and what needs we need to meet with our products moving forward. It's interesting to plan for user research, especially now when I am representing Axis as I'm doing it. It's important to give a good impression, and invoke the users to open up and discuss the product with me, without judging their feedback nor promising them anything.

After speaking to users (both of our system and different systems) I'm on my way to pin pointing similarities and differences of different types of users of access control systems. I will continue this pin pointing through making user journeys. My aim is to pin point what feels "safe" to use and what makes a product feel unreliable. This is a key point of access control systems, and important experience to nail in order to create a successful access control system.

Another task I have been tackling this week is to finish off a UX audit of one feature of the access control system that we're working with. This audit is to make Tony's work a bit easier, or less heavy at least. He has made an audit himself, but asked me to make one as well so he has two perspectives on the matter. It was a fun task that really encouraged me to put on my skeptical glasses and criticize the current version of the feature. The audit resulted in a checklist of improvements that I see need to be done, and I hope it will be beneficial for Tony when he needs to attack the re-design of the feature. For this task I also got a lot of help from a QA colleague, Haris. He's very easy to talk to and discuss things with, and since he has done quality assurance of this feature he also had his own ideas of what needs to be improved and fixed. We had a good discussion of different aspects of the feature and unlocked deeper findings through brainstorming improvements together. To me it's super valuable to discuss a feature, issues, improvements and design out loud with someone else, because not only do I get their knowledge and ideas, I also unlock further ideas and thoughts within myself as I discuss. As valuable it is to discuss with fellow UX designers, I also believe it's important to broaden the perspectives and include colleagues with different roles for cross-disciplinary discussions. I saw this post that reminded me of the importance of different perspectives:

As a designer I will focus on how the user will experience the improved feature, while Haris (QA) will focus on how the improved feature can be built better. For me, this resulted in a fruitful discussion including both perspectives of problem solving and design thinking.

[clarasjournal]

Week 3

I managed to forget my notebook at work, so I'll be winging this post a bit. This week was shorter than usual because I had to remove one of my wisdom teeth on Monday. So this week I felt like I was a bit behind, even though I'm probably not.

Nonetheless, I've started to dig deeper into one aspect of access control, and my first goal is to get an understanding of what the actual users need in order to be able to use our systems. I have booked some meetings with some who use our current system, and some who use other systems but for the same purpose. These meetings will be held next week and I'm looking forward to see how valuable user communication actually is in a real setting. I know it has been valuable for the past projects I've been involved with through school - talking with people involved in offering and receiving economic support, for example. I think as a UX designer, the user contact is one of the most important things to consider when designing for them. Of course, we can have prejudices and initial thoughts of what our users need - but it's when you talk to actual users and the target user group that you realize hidden gems that will get your design to the next level. It's also really fun to talk to users and see how the insights you can gather from them come to life in your designs later on. Once I have talked to real users and gathered data from how they use and understand their systems, I want to create user journeys that explain similarities and differences of different user groups that are using this kind of system.

This week I've been involved in discussions of the important balance between functionality and usability. Axis is very good at producing functionality, features and technological advancements. The trick is to make the usability able to keep up with the pace of the functionality. I think what it takes is to involve UX designers a whole lot earlier than what I've seen so far. In my opinion I think that UX designers should be involved as early as possible in a feature development or advancement of any kind. Without it we won't know if the feature or development is actually for the user or just for the sake of the technological advancements. A huge benefit of UX designers is that we enable the company to make developments that will be appreciated by the user rather than it falling flat because it was never asked for - no matter how technologically advanced it is.

At a meeting where tasks where delivered to teams and colleagues, I got a task on my shoulders. After the meeting my supervisor Tony rang me and said that this task was supposed to land on him and not me - because right now I'm not an employee, I'm an intern. I'm here to learn and not to produce and deliver. It feels good that Tony is backing me up in this and that he has my best learning interest in mind and that I'm not only here for Axis benefits. He mentioned that my insights will be the things I will deliver for Axis in the end. At the same time I feel valued that they see me capable enough to put me on a task even though I'm just an intern that's been here for less than three weeks. But my role will be to focus on proactive thinking for future developments, not to put out current fires.

On Wednesday I felt a bit lost again, a bit like I was just floating around in the background, doing things that actually is important and do matter - but not right now, rather for the future way of working with UX in Axis. I felt a bit like I was walking around in a circle of trying to gather information just as much for my sake as for the companies sake - and writing the insights down, analyzing and then back to gathering. I know it will eventually evolve into a project I can do something with, and that this is just the initial stages of me getting to know the company and the users I want to focus on further on. The features we have that can be evolved and how/which UX practices and methods can be valuable for me to try out and learn. Still, I felt a bit like I wasn't doing anything productive - just floating around creating analyses that I don't know yet if they will be valuable or not. Hopefully they will be beneficial in the future, in order to be able to make informed design decisions. And that's always a good thing - and important. Maybe I can, through my background work, show Axis how important it is to have a good knowledge about the users when creating new systems and products?

[clarasjournal]

Week 2

Week 2 is done, and I've got more and more to do! Which is exciting, because I still feel like I can distance myself from stress and heavy burdens since I'm just an intern. And I'm there to learn, which I am, most definitely!

This week I've:

Been creating use cases

Been on meetings regarding an upcoming release

Been learning about the system (that I'm working with)

Had the first meeting with my supervisor from school, Mali, along with Tony

Got input on my use cases from QA (Quality Assurance)

Quickly introduced my use case study to a product manager and other colleagues

Been involved in meetings

Had a 1-to-1 meeting with a product manager

Learned about Axis personas and roles

Begun a UX audit on another feature of access control

Casual sync with other designers from other parts of Axis

Creating use cases: Use cases are hard to create when there's no contact with actual clients/customers/users. They are fictional, based on my assumptions of what they need to do in order to make the system work for them. I've been reading up on use cases through this source: https://www.uxness.in/2020/04/use-cases-in-ux-significance-and-how-to.html. The main insights I got from this article are that use cases should:

highlight the possible interactions between user and the system,

contain sets of actions that the user requires to do in order to achieve a goal,

help identify how the system is expected to perform rather than how it's currently performing,

highlight what setbacks might possibly occur while performing a task,

be more oriented towards user action -> system result rather than user input -> system output.

I have tried to gather as much information as I can about how Axis usually present use cases, and realized that they are often more functionality and technology oriented than human oriented. They often lack the rationale behind the use case as well, meaning that the use case does not answer "why" this is important to implement. Tony has also nudged me towards creating more problematic use cases rather than "happy cases". Getting input from QA was also valuable, because that made the argument for explaining why in a use case stronger. Haris, my QA colleague, was clear in explaining that answering the why of a use case makes the QA understand the use case better, they buy into it in another way and the use case becomes much more grounded in real usage rather than abstract features. But to create use cases based on assumptions rather than real customer contact is not the optimal way to go, but it's what I have to do since there is such a limited amount of customer contact. To create strong use cases you would need that customer contact to generate quotes, situations grounded in reality and find real problems. It would also be easier to see actual step-by-step actions that are required to take in order to achieve a goal.

Involvement in meetings: Through being involved in meetings I've started to feel like a valued colleague and team member. Through colleagues saying "as Clara & Tony have done..." or "you could ask Clara & Tony about..." I've felt highly involved and like a UX practitioner - which feels exciting. I've been included in important discussions and meetings about new upcoming releases and I've even got a say in what will be going out very soon. The product manager of access control reached out to me personally for a 1 to 1 meeting about discussing my thoughts on a specific feature, which made me a bit nervous but mostly excited. It means a lot that my colleagues and the management values my "soon-to-be-professional" opinions and thoughts.

Through being involved in different types of meetings throughout the weeks I also feel empowered in getting to see and learn more and more. For example, I value syncing with other designers, to see what they're working on currently and to see them blow off some steam designer-to-designer. Being involved and a part of this makes me feel like a part of the design team.

Meeting with supervisors: The meeting with my supervisors informed me that it's a good idea to find a good topic to reflect around during my internship. Could be anything that I find interesting while working at Axis. Maybe working under a NDA (secrecy form), collaboration across teams, design practices and methods, the limited customer contact or working with UX in a highly technologically driven company?

Reflection about UX in a big company: In this upcoming release that has been discussed over the week (due today) UX was involved in a very late stage. Too late to be able to make any valuable changes. The team that has been working with the release thought that they came to us with a small thing, but what they hadn't considered was how this "small thing" would create setbacks in future releases. We had to create a quick fix, a poor man's solution, to be able to release it this week - but I will continue iterating on this feature to make sure it will fix up better for the next upcoming releases. I think that this is a common problem in bigger technology oriented companies, where there is a heavy focus on the engineering, but smaller focus on the UX. Maybe the purpose of UX and what we do isn't commonly known across all the employees and the managements. I think it's up and coming, I think it's starting to change, but I think stuff like this will keep on happening... In my own opinion I think UX should be involved straight off the bat, once a feature, system, product or the like has been decided on - I think UX should come in to make sure that the user will not be overlooked for the sake of functionality and technology. It's important to find a middle ground, a balance, between pushing functionality and pushing usability.

[clarasjournal]

Change of structure

I had the ambition to write one post per day, but at the info meeting with the course responsible I realized that that will be over ambitious. The final reflection examination will have a word count, and I'm doing myself a disservice through writing too much. Even though I have a lot to write about!

So I will continue through trying to summarize my reflections I gathered over the week into one post - and I will do my very best to keep it short and concise.

[clarasjournal]

Wednesday 1/9

First day of Autumn. September. I better make sure to get all the last rays of sun that I can before the darkness flows over the country. I know exactly how affected I get from not being exposed to the sun and especially when the days are getting shorter and shorter. It was so extremely apparent during last year. The first day I woke up once the sun had yet to come up I was devastated. For a whole week I was grumpy and ill tempered. And then daylight savings or whatever it's called kicked in a week later and I woke the next Monday with the sun risen, and immediately felt a change in my temper. How strange. Sorry, this paragraph was completely uncalled for and definitely useless for any reader.

Moving on to internship related reflections. This morning I knew more about what I could expect from my internship and I realized that I thought it would be a great experience for me to work close to Tony and experience what he does on a day to day basis as a UX designer for access control solutions. I'd appreciate being on his meetings as much as I can, and discuss design solutions with multidisciplinary teams.

During lunch I talked to a friend of mine who shone an even greater light to the journey I had made in just two workdays. So, at first I got a task that I thought would be too similar to the one me and Christina had done over the summer - so I talked to Tony about this as soon as I could. After our conversation I understood it as instead of extending my summer job and kind of "making up" my own tasks, I would work closer to Tony in what he does and learn from this. Be able to discuss design ideas with each other and grab tasks from his desk that he feels that he won't have time for or tasks that we can share. The (small but valuable to me) insights I grabbed from this journey was that:

I did the right thing in reaching out as quick as possible to my supervisor when I felt like I wanted to challenge myself with other types of tasks.

For me to realize that I am an intern first hand, no longer an employee.

That I will learn a whole lot more from working close to Tony rather than taking on too much "own responsibility" (even though I will start doing this along the way as well).

So on Wednesday I kept on learning about access control solutions and Tony's current work. I realized when looking at his mock-ups that it is even more important to do scaled down wireframes when working for a big company like Axis where you don't want any inconsistency issues. It's better to name the components you want to place in a frame first rather than adding the components straight away.

Today Tony also had a walkthrough of the system with me for 2h which was super helpful for me to get a grip on what I'll be a part of. Afterwards I had a lot of thoughts on tasks I could make for myself in the coming week as well as getting to know the acs department further.

I also spend some time going through how I've reflected in the past and what the main take aways I have that can aid me in my present. As McNaulty said in "The Wire":

"If you don't look at the things you've done before, you're going to do the same shit all over again"

That may be the first and last clever thing that character has ever said in that show.

[clarasjournal]

Tuesday 31/8

On Tuesday morning I felt equally confused as I had on Monday afternoon, if not more. I had booked a meeting with Tony on Tuesday afternoon, but it wasn't until 15 so I had plenty of time to worry and jump to conclusions.

I wrote this in my notes:

"Right now I don't know where to start, or even if I should start with anything. It reminds me a lot of the course 'Interactivity' where no real structure or plan was given. There was a lot of scrambling around. But interactivity turned out to be the best course I've ever taken so I think this will work out as well"

I spent Tuesday reading both what I could find from the canvas page about the actual course of the internship, and stuff I could find about the department I'm a part of as an intern here.

I was worried about it being too UI centered, or rather, too graphically designer centered. And I'm not the sharpest graphical designer out there, not even close. I try! I really do, but I don't find it very interesting and I just don't have "the eye" that sometimes seems necessary to have in order to be an accomplished and good graphical designer. But most importantly, I lack the passion of graphical design. My passion lies with the user problems, finding solutions fitted like a glove for those who will be using the products of our work and creating seamless and effortless flows designed to fit the targeted user group. Style guides and design guidelines in all honor, but I'd be sad to find that that would be all I would be doing with my internship - that's intended for me to grow in my specific field of work and do what I can see myself doing in the future once I've graduated.

On Tuesday morning I also read an article about UX audit and how to conduct these. I realized halfway through that I had already made an UX audit without realizing it at the time - for a startup company called... nope, forgot the name... it was a social app for skaters that wished to connect yadayada. But I can't find my notes from this audit. Not that it matters really, I did it once - it was a checklist of all the design improvements I could find during a brief check-through. Spent one night doing that, so it didn't take very long but it was nice to realize that I had already implemented a common design method without realizing it.

At 15 I met up with Tony across Teams and immediately felt better about my situation. I quickly realized that I had made a hen out of a feather, and was made sure that I did not have to spend all my time being a graphical designer and taking care of Axis design backlog. The initial stocktaking task he gave me on Monday was more of a "if you want something to do meanwhile" task, and was not intended to last longer than a week. I felt a bit stupid for thinking that that would be all I was going to do for the entire internship, but relieved that he had other plans for me. We spoke and came to the conclusion that I would work closer to him and learn all I wished to learn about the access control department. This first week would be all about getting to know the context of access control solutions and understanding the tasks that we'll be facing further along the line.

[clarasjournal]

Monday, 30/8

First day of the internship! I started off the day with a meeting with my on-site supervisor which I will from here on now just refer to as Tony. We talked about some initial tasks for me to grab on to, and it was all a bit confusing coming from a summer worker point of view and trying to just re-set into the mindset of an intern. I didn't want to be mistaken for an employee that is expected to know everything about the company and the work tasks already, this time my focus will lie on "what can I gain from this" and "what can I reflect best upon?". So basically, I can reflect best upon work I haven't done before. I want to learn, not just produce and deliver things I know how to produce and deliver. (wow it kills me not to be direct and have to conceal company secrets like this.. maybe it'll get easier the more I do it).

But let's just say that the three tasks I could identify from our initial talk this morning was:

Stocktaking

UX audit

Complicated user flows

These all sound interesting, but I felt like I had gotten a grip of stocktaking already and wanted to do something different and challenge myself while I can (as an intern).

Axis is a hardware focused company that has great engineering competencies, but the design part of the solutions have been a bit overlooked until recently where they have started their change journey towards user-centeredness. I can imagine this being difficult for a company like Axis that has little contact with their actual users, since they only sell to partners that in turn sells to customers. Axis is starting to push for more user contact and, for me, this is going to be a really interesting journey to embark on. But since the design has been a bit overlooked in the past there is a lot to do in the backlog, and a lot to stocktake. Axis is facing a lot of stuff that will be really helpful for me to point to and solve. Some of these things feel huge and almost overwhelming, but we have to start somewhere, and I think it's going to be a huge learning for me to see the consequences of not having a "design first" mindset from the beginning. But still, I want to do some stuff that I know I want to develop skills in as well, be in sharp situations where we need to understand complicated user flows and deliver well thought out and informed design choices. From what I understood, one task is to prevent that the user will feel stupid while interacting with our systems - and this task made me feel really intrigued. It would be nice to test my skills in user journeys and come up with solutions of how to create an "ease of use" sensation while still not being simple enough to be used by anyone. It's supposed to fit our user group/s and I really look forward into diving deeper into understanding these user groups and designing specifically for them.

Maybe I'll even get to do some personas and user research on these user groups to figure out how they most likely would prefer to work in our systems. Even though personas hasn't worked out for me in the past (during service design for economic support) they might actually help with specified work roles.

These tasks will also demand having conversations with other teams, such as the QA (quality assurance) and front-end developers teams. To gather feedback and input from them will be really interesting, since these will be multidisciplinary discussions and bring super valuable insights to me as a designer which I won't get through only talking to other designers.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm writing this on Friday and this was all part of what I got to hear about on Monday. The thing is I didn't know what I know now, and it's only been a week. But on Monday I felt really confused and taken aback because I thought for a while that I would only be continuing doing what I had done during the summer. And I couldn't identify the tasks of what me and Tony spoke about on Monday until late Tuesday/Wednesday. I had to process it and read up on access control and what it meant to work in this department of Axis New Business. On Monday I wrote this down in my notes:

"I feel super unstructured. I don't really understand what I'm going to be doing. I want concrete tasks. Or at least concrete goals. And if I can't have that I want concrete problems!"

But it wasn't like this at all once I had settled a bit more and distanced myself from everything. I didn't want concrete tasks from the get go, I want to be more introduced to the access control department and learn about the different aspects we will face here and in what context I will be working. But on Monday I was worried that I would spend a lot of time doing stocktaking, and even though I see the value in doing this in a company that has a lot in their design backlog, I wished to be doing something different for my internship. To learn through being placed in sharp situations where I could flex my educationally earned skills of user journey, user flow, user research and prototyping. Now I see that I will be doing all this and more, and who knows, maybe I'll get back to the stocktaking and see the true value of learning through this a bit further ahead in my internship.

[clarasjournal]

Internship at Axis Communication

So, Axis Communications! I will spend the whole term here, on site, which I am super grateful of. I'm also grateful of getting to write a reflective journal every Friday. So the set up is like this:

Monday - Thursday: work 8h a day

Friday: reflective journal, readings and university assignment preparations

I worked at Axis during this summer along with my very talented and competent colleague (and classmate) Christina Erić. This gave me the opportunity to get to know the business and my other colleagues in advance, before starting my internship here. I still have a lot to learn, and I'm looking forward to doing something entirely different on my internship than I did during the summer - even if it's for the same company.

Axis is a big company focussing on safety and security solutions for buildings like for example schools, airports and other businesses. Their main focus is security cameras, but I will be working in a separate field of Axis called New Business, where they focus on other types of security solutions. And within this "New Business" I will be working with the access control solutions. This means solutions for getting in and out of buildings basically. My on-site supervisor is Tony Olsson, which is a senior UX designer that's part of the access control solutions team. My hopes are that I will be working quite closely to him and learn through co-operation and learn through taking on more and more responsibility of some of the tasks he's working on.

Since I'll be working on site Monday - Thursday I won't post anything on the reflective journal until Friday, so my set up for this will be to dedicate a post a day and label them the date of which I am reflecting back on. But I'll also write separate posts for when I've found something interesting to reflect on. Eh, you'll see.

[clarasjournal]

Restarting the old journal

New year since I last journaled. This time I'm back as a UX intern at Axis Communications. My internship will last from 30th of August to 14th of January. In this journal I will continue as before with my reflections, thoughts, struggles, insights and learnings. I will keep my journalling style as free and outspoken as before. Some posts will be only pure rants and rambles, while others may be a bit more structured.

As I am an intern of Axis Communications which do not wish me to reveal their company secrets, I will keep some parts of my reflections more abstract and try to tiptoe around what I'm actually reflecting about.

If you've read my journal before you know that I keep my heart on my sleeve and I'm not very good at hiding my emotional journey. I will keep on this path since I feel like I gain the most valuable insights through putting myself out there - vulnerable, honest and raw. Due to this, please take my posts with a pinch of salt - I'm sometimes more dramatic than I need to be. This is just the way I blow off the blinding fog that builds up within me whenever I feel overwhelmed, confused or just trying to wrap my head around what I'm doing. Also, English is not my first language and I will not spell check or grammar check anything I write here. That I'll save for the thesis. So I'm sorry in advance for my many grammatical errors that you as a reader will unfortunately, definitely, encounter.

My main topics of reflections will (hopefully) be:

Where am I right now?

Where is this going?

What lead to this?

What insights have I gathered and how can I gather more?