UXDI student confession

A journey from being a UX amateur to becoming a magic UX unicorn. May General Assembly help me!

[irynium]

Let’s prototype… rapidly

Approach

Check my retrospective on the project of creating a To-Do list app. My role: researcher and designer. 

[irynium]

Lucky Louie: Why?

Don’t underestimate the power of WHY when conducting a User Research.

[aureliemadeline]

CHEAP CAR LEASING from LING VALENTINE, from DRAGONS' DEN offers a range of CHEAP car leasing and contract hire options for business or personal use.

[irynium]

Keeping all design principles in mind...

[irynium]

Think visually

Day 3 of 10 weeks UXD immersive. 

Today is the first time in 3 days I’ve felt relaxed. Ideating, sketching and prototyping is definitely my thing. I just immersed and went with the flow. Love it! The only thing to work on: I need to stop over-prettifying. Yes, it’s exiting to sketch nicely, but if it eats my precious time, than I just need to drop it. Simplify. Use STOPWATCH. Say “no” to perfectionism. Today we were taught some awesome tricks on how to turn rough and quick hand-drawing into a powerful designer tool. We did some sketching exercises and I was surprised how quickly I can sketch when put into strict time frames. Here are some of the sketches that were performed in just 1-2 mins each.

Later we discussed different prototyping methods and techniques, and went into details with paper prototyping (this is what we are supposed to do for our 1st project).

During workshop hours we should have been working on the following:

- Sketching in order to explore how data, which we got from affinity mapping, can be transformed into our future app features.

- Creating simple paper prototype of the app and make sure it’s ready for testing.

I’m about to turn my paper prototype into an interactive one with POP app. And that will be it for the day. Tomorrow we’ll be testing.

[irynium]

Day 1

It was definitely awesome! A little bit overwhelming (talking about the rythm here, not about amount of information), but I know this will just be accumulating every day from now for the next 10 weeks. So - no regrets! I’m going to do my best to get into the flow, to really immerse and get the most out of it.

What I’ve learned today:

Knowledge:

How to succeed in this program

setting the right goals and expectations

coping with your gremlins

working in the team

Introduction to UX

What is UX?

Why is it important?

How to design UX (from business, UXD and user perspectives)?

Who practices UXD?

The most vibrant piece of knowledge I’ve got today was probably the one about T-SHAPED UX Designer.

The skills practicing:

Observation

User/expert interviews (no scenarios)

Ideation

Analysis

Presentation

EXERCISE: Redesign something local (1.5 hour project)

We did this little project during our lunch time: we had to choose one of the 3 proposed services (MTA, CityBike and lunch), observe how users interact with it, notice pain points and then offer improvements. My team went with CityBike.

We did the following:

Checked how the CityBike kiosk's UI works (without reading the instructions previously).

Observed people, who were using the kiosks, docking / undocking bikes.

Asked questions, when noticing that users looked confused (paint points).

Based on our findings we created 2 personas that represents 2 main types of CityBikes users:

Neil Newbie: sporadic user, perhaps tourist or someone who needs to utilize a bike occasionally.

Roger Resident: yearly user, who has an account and a key and don’t need to interact with the kiosk every time he needs a bike.

These are our solutions (S) to main paint points (PP) we’ve noticed:

Neil Newbie problems:

PP1: Credit card entry is required in the beginning of the process (alarming to first time users, especially tourists - no trust build yet). 

S1: Move credit card entry to the end of the process.

PP2: No definition for a red signal (bike isn't available - reserved or broken). The green light is explained though. 

S2: Put the explanation of the red light on the bike’s handle (where the explanation for the green light is).

PP3: Passcode buttons looks the same as the signals icons - circle shaped (2 alike controls which interacts differently). 

S3: Change the appearance of passcode buttons. Make them look more like real buttons (with affordance to push).

Roger Resident problems:

PP4: Unclear which slot to put the key in. 

S4: Mark the key slot with a corresponding icon (a key) or make it at least the same color as the key is (blue). Or both.

PP5: Not obvious, which bikes are available for use (a user need to check every individually). 

S5: Move this information (all lights) to the top of dock, so it is visible “at a glance”.

Problems of both Neil and Roger:

PP6: Bigger bags won’t fit into bike’s compartment. 

S6: Make the compartment extendable.

Credits to my great team: Gregorio, Olya and Sarah.

[irynium]

Who am I?

My name is Iryna. I'm an enthusiastic learner, problem solver and simply a curious person.  I have a craving for new knowledge - technology- or people-related, primarily. I like to understand how the tech works and how people think and behave. 

My diverse background includes a bit of everything: engineering, business, advertising and design. All of it had its impact on my choice to pursue carrier in User Experience Design. And I believe that this might be my last stop, because UXD deeply resonates with my talents and passions. I read UX books and articles instead of storybooks or social networks. I analyze every bit of design around me, trying to detect potential flaws and improve upon those.  

There is still so much I need to learn and master before I can call myself a professional in the field, but I've already made my first steps toward my dream job. Here I come!

[irynium]

The design of your product is only as good as its smallest part.

Dan Saffer

[irynium]

Confidence doesn’t come from knowing you’re right—it comes from being okay with failing.

Mike Monteiro “Design is a job”