General Assembly UXDI5

Ramblings during UXDI5 at GA Sydney

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Notes on Week 2

Interesting points in review:

Design is a process of making decisions

The Five Whys?- Start with Why- Simon Sinek

“The role of a designer is to navigate through chaos and to be comfortable with uncertainty.”- Leonard Pak

The Design Process aka "the UX strategy" for an e-commerce site

Business Analysis- understanding your competitors, advertising models- it is good to understand where the stakeholder comes from, to bring them along, what they think are their customer, their brand/ culture.

Information Architecture- you have organise the content somehow, to avoid getting lost and make sense of the information.

Sitemap and iteration- after defining that structure, the sitemap is good chart defining the structure of the information which outline overall navigation

Sketching and iteration- in defining the sitemap, sketching shows visually how the website may appear to the user It also delivers a foretaste to the stakeholders of a user centred visual design, to illustrate the integration of the previous research. Iterations at this process would help align with the stakeholder’s values and user’s existing understanding of using websites.

Prototype- in developing sketches into an interactive prototype, it provides a UX consultant to test the website with the user and observe their own engagement and if it aligns to the initial designs.

Presentation of findings- in delivering these findings to the stakeholders, it provides them with a user-centred solution that will draw more users to their website and wanting to participate with their brand identity 

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If you want to play the Riser prototype, refer to the Pop up link

If you have any questions about how it works, just let me know? It might seem a little confusing, without the complete context. 

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POP - Riser

My app prototype on the POP App

Hopefully you are able to navigate it. 

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Day 5- Presentation and reflection

Key Ideas:

Practicing would be a good idea

Tell and sell a story

Feedback is a means for improvement

Reflections:

Public speaking is still uncomfortable for me, but I think that i still need the practice 

It was interesting to see how far we as a group in terms of everyone's ideas

I am proud that I was working towards a problem that there is a need for, particularly for the children demographic which is growing market towards technology

I am not necessarily confident in the solution, but I am interested in finding the right solution for this problem. 

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POP - Riser

My app prototype on the POP App

Hopefully you are able to navigate it. 

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Day 4- Prototyping

Key Ideas:

Don't be too abstract in your drawing- Ben Crothers

Flow is everything

Learning to kill your early designs; as if you freeze an idea too quickly, you will fall in love with it!

Foundation lines are good

Highlights:

Drawing the app 

Getting complements on my drawings

Using Pop App- its kind of fun to use especially to see your prototype function

It was also fun to see the app that Mal also designed for my problem; being able to communicate to my parents who are not tech savy and often as me to assist with tasks.

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Ben Crother's Sketching Workshop

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Day 3- Sketching Scenarios, User Flows and User maps

Key Ideas:

Sketching= thinking, not about creating art

Getting the design right and then getting the right design- Bill Buxton

Doing scenarios and user flows was really useful because it broke down how the app would be used in practice. It also showed insight in how a user would readily navigate the app, screen by screen. 

My scenario for Mal and his son in the morning, with the app, Riser

My messy user flow 

The user flow shows the insight into how both Mal and his son would interact with this app. Parental guidelines are need to help implement the activities (or interactive content) and set the timer to manage how his son would approach and do the relevant tasks. It would also help monitor his son's activities to view his progress.

His son's participation is through the interactive content and rising to the occasion to beat the timed activities, retrieve his reward and make his dad proud by being so helpful. 

The mess aims to show the iterations that I created to try and fine tune the app process. It was also interesting getting feedback from other course members, particularly as their approach was all different. It can sometimes be hard to extrapolate which advice is useful though.

This means that there are two users to solve Mal's problem: by helping his son, the app in turn helps Mal. As such it was not a direct problem that Mal faced but it was a relevant problem to young families. 

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Day 1

Key ideas:

Being receptive to feedback

Ask permission before giving feedback

AEIOU: Activities, Environment, Interactions, Objects, Users

Feedback is crucial to UX design, particular as we are not designing for ourselves but for others. That in itself is a great maxim and lesson to learn. 

Experience as a whole involves making the experience better, which is thinking from the top down approach.

Our first activity to understand how to approach user's experience in the QVB. Working in groups provide a chance to feed off each other's ideas. Even by talking to actual user's of the QVB, such as the security guard and the shop owners, it show insight to their thought process and their priorities in interacting with this building.

Things that the QVB could work on in the future:

Wayfinding and Signage

Signs are too small to see, in particular directions to the toilets or navigating the different passageways. This makes the area also appear congested which decompresses the historical significance of the area. 

A final note, I find it hilarious by the changes in the Ladies Powder Room. A place to reflect back to the opulence of the Queen Victoria Building, its original granite interior with sensored taps (a first for its time) and a lady handing paper towels is replaced by generic taps and one make up mirror. So much for an authentic powder room. 

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Thank you!

First of all, in case this ever gets read I just want to say a quick thank you to all the people involved in allowing me to be awarded the General Assembly Opportunity Fund for UXDI December 2014.

Considering the ups and downs that I have faced this year, I do hope that this course will become the highlight of my year and that it helps improve upon my design thinking skills.

I do hope that this course will contribute towards meaningful and improving the human experience and trigger work that adds value to people lives. 

So far, it has been a challenging experience (already at the beginning). However, I hope that this course will lead to greater opportunities in my future.