Day 5: My gran could do better!
Okay so now you know I’ve been ripping off my titles from Gordon Ramsay. But I love his shows, and the first two weeks’ project is all about food so it’s only appropriate. Anyway onto day 5!
Presentation day. Today we headed off in a direction that was more serious. The instructor did tell us, “ Don’t worry we won’t need a slide deck — just walk us through the process of what you learned and applied thus far”. I mean, I was confident about my materials and thinking on the fly, but I was not prepared of what to come.
Anyway, there were 10 of us in this small class with more coming onto the second batch of students. For the walkthrough, I was number 5. One of my classmates went first and pitched her ideas and appreciation on the design thinking process, affinity mapping etcetera. Lots and lots of buzz words there, and there were a lot of takeaways from what she did well. Now by the second and third ‘presenter’ a sudden cloud of doubt filled my mind…
Hold on, were we supposed to make a presentation template out of this?
I froze. There was no time left and the third person had already started her fantastic presentation halfway and onto the fourth. Of course, keeping my nerves still in check I tried to ask a few questions still and scribbled my notes. Nothing’s getting in the way of my learning, I told myself, not even my own clumsy. So I looked into the folder where I messily sorted what materials were there and tried to sort it by process order.
The fifth person however had other ideas for me. Okay, that’s a bit accusatory, but as she pulled out her screen to everyone’s amazement it was super duper organised. Like I mean, she was using an app to write notes on our entire week’s class! And this project was just one of the little tabs tucked away under “UX Design”. Oh how envious was I (because it was so well done)! It was definitely giving me heart palpitations at this point, half blaming my unpreparedness. My gran could do better!
Oh did I forget to tell you? I was number six.
I proceeded to make my case clear. Starting from the client brief (which to my surprise, no one else has moved this far back before starting their research plan) I proceeded to talk about by target audiences, made my assumptions and questioned them. My research plan, thankfully, was standardised under the class guidance, as well as my interview questions. Also, I felt like I explored the most with my affinity map. Honestly, I don’t know why. My thoughts are just naturally branched and sometimes I do overthink a lot. I even sometimes ask my own self questions, and answer my own self doubts to ease them
From this point onwards I realised I was talking up my 5 minutes while most people took 2–3 minutes. So I quickly summarised my persona and synthesis — how I arrived at the problem statement and HMW. Great, no interruptions so far. Accepting the silence as good, I showed my thought process on my ideation sketches and my sinful wireflows. Yeah, the one I did last night, except that I spent a bit too long on it because I got addicted to. A set of 2 will do, I said to myself last night.
Anyway I concluded, and a lot of positive comments! I was like, what? That was not supposed to happen at all. I mean I really did the material, but I did feel I was nowhere near real-world standards. I accepted the praise graciously, but also there were some feedback from the instructor and the assistant.
The instructor: “ Why did you use something so generic like keep healthy in your problem statement?” Which to this I explained about the difficulties I had reaching to that problem statement, and that I changed it 3–4 times before I could get it right on target. My user’s fear, I explained, was actually the worry that she would fall sick.
The assistant: “ Don’t worry about having your things everywhere. I also have experienced that but as long as you can go through and access everything, I think I got your thought process well.” To which I said thank you, that’s what I needed to hear!
Anyway these two things were really valuable feedbacks. I then proceeded to follow on the rest of the four presenters and noted that man, these guys in my class are awesome. They have such a variety and depth of their backgrounds that I can’t begin to replicate them; their flair and abilities shine through wonderfully in this mock. I noted down more things and shut my notebook for lunch.
The next project will be soon, so stay tuned for week 2!