Daniel Abreu - UXDI Blog

My journey into the day to day of UXDI8 at GA London

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When a team designs mobile first, the end result is an experience focused on the key tasks users want to accomplish

Luke Wroblewski

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Day #20 “Mobile is so hot right now” -  Today we’ve covered one of my favourite lectures so far. Mobile First, it was great to learn about being future friendly and not future proof. With 1.2 billion people accessing the web from a mobile device it’s so important we take advantage but learn about the importance of designing for mobile. We learnt about Responsive vs Adaptive Design but also looked into Native App development. One of my favourite take aways from today was the concept of “continuous design” where there is a sequenced activity flow and the MVP is consistent across all devices, a great example of this is Netflix! You can resume watching on any platform and the look and feel is exactly the same..... @uxdilondonautumn2015

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PHYSICALITY AND SPECIFICATIONS

Most mobile devices employ touch screens, where users rely on gestures – in addition to simple interface elements – to interact with them. Because of their smaller dimensions,we sometimes expect the content structures to be simpler and smaller. Also, because of their limited bandwidth and connectivity, mobile devices require designs to be optimized for loading time, with reduced data requirements.

HOW, WHERE AND WHEN

Because we have constant access to our mobile devices, we tend to use them more frequently. They come with us on the bus, walking down the street, or watching TV. We often use them while “doing” something else. This means we may use the device under difficult viewing conditions, or among a variety of distractions.

HOW WE BEHAVE AND FEEL

Finally, we have different attitudes, behaviors and priorities while using mobile devices. As part of their Going Mobile 2012 study, User Experience Design agency Foolproof found that these devices have given us a new sense of freedom and control. In turn, some users feel a very real affection for their mobile device. Foolproof found that 63% of people felt lost if their smartphone was not in easy reach. They described their mobile devices as‘alive’ … an extension of their own body and personality

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Accessibility is not about designing for a few. It's designing for us all

Paul Boag

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Day #19 Today in the GA house we are learning about User Personas, Accessibility and using techniques like Proto Personas and Empathy maps to understand the behaviours and patterns behind our users. 

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Day #18 - Lovely ray’s of sunshine this morning during standup and today we have a full day packed! We’re learning all about Contextual Inquiries and having our first Sketch workshop which I’m very excited about... 

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We’ve been learning also at GA the importance of Project planning, scrum and following the process. There will always be certain constrains that as designers we need not just to be aware about but respond to the changes that occur throughout the process. There is a scope but the variables will always change...

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Never start a project with out a plan, even in lean start-up where nothing exists! There is always a plan of attack...

GA

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Your Survey: 10 Top Tips

1. Think about who it is for 2. Think about what you want to find out from them. 3. How can we get this info as quickly as possible, with as FEW questions as possible? 4. Eliminate questions which do not tie directly to your goal. 5. Consider moving more qualitative, open ended questions to your user interview phase. 6. Be friendly in your survey copy. Give positive, human feedback. A good survey reads like a conversation and is not robotic. 7. Add your demographics at the end, not the beginning. These are the boring bits! Hook people in with the good stuff first. 8. Consider what you actually need to ask: e.g. is it relevant whether your users are male or female? Don’t ask for the sake of it. 9. Re-iteration: AVOID OPEN ENDED QUESTIONS! Multiple choice tick boxes are preferable. You can include an ‘other’ option which provides a chance for users to write something if they really want to. 10. Consider your delivery. Make your tweet snappy and unique. Use relevant, well researched hashtags that will get your tweet on the radar of people who are not following you.

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Day #17 This morning we kicked off our project 3 by learning all about Survey’s and how to recruit participants. For our team project, we will be assembling an online survey to gain key insights from our users and recruit participants so we can interview them. We also learnt about screeners and how important it is to design surveys that are delightful, not time constraining but most effective to gain specific and useful insights.  

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Day #16 - A new week begins and with it a brand new project!  For the next two weeks I will be working on our first team project learning how to collaborate and deliver an awesome project as part of a cross functional team!  The brief our team has received is: Deliver a new feature for Meetup.com to help connect event organisers with venue hosts (more to follow...) @uxdilondonautumn2015 #lifeatga 

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Draw your week - Project 2 is done!

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That’s me!

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That’s all of you! :)

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To wrap day 15 we had a great Networking session with Laura our course Producer.. and summarised what we have to give here at GA! 

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Iterative design process

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Some amazing Draw  Your Week creations. 

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This week has been a true rollercoaster but so happy to say I’m extremely proud of what we have achieved in week 3!  #proud 

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It’s all quiet here as the UXFactor is in session.... :D 

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Day #15 Presentation day!  Can’t believe how fast project two has gone, today I will be presenting to the GA class my Gousto micro site extension walking them through an interactive prototype and my design process. I’ve really enjoyed working on this project as it’s helped me to learn a lot about the process behind UX and refining some of the fundamentals from week 1!