L¡na

UX/UI Designer | Mother of cats | Wannabe Photographer

[lphforero]

The End (maybe?)

Well, these posts are no longer mandatory but after two months of weekly pouring my thoughts and opinions onto the void of the internet, it became a habit. Let's see how long it takes until I no longer want to share a piece of my life with strangers.

My journey into re-inventing myself started 3 years ago when I was presented with the possibility of a "woman in tech" by my partner. I wasn't aware at the time, but that one week of JavaScript basic learning, paired with Covid-19, would change my life completely.

And I'm glad it did.

I got to meet amazing people who are so different from me and that add much more color and diversity into my life, and I had their support while stepping outside of my comfort zone and into a series of challenges I never thought I'd face.

I loved doing it!

To finish off those 9 weeks of intense learning, we reserved our Friday to have lunch and dinner together, enjoy some cocktails while laughing and feeling the sun touching our faces for the first time in ages. I honestly couldn't have imagined a better way to say goodbye.

From now on, my only wish is that we keep sharing our feelings and supporting one another while exploring the world of working as designers.

Thank you for reading and see you next week! Maybe.

[lphforero]

"Nada jamais continua, Tudo vai recomeçar!"

Mario Quintana

Week 8 is gone, and there's only one week ahead of me before the end of this fast-paced journey.

Even though is not over yet, I have a little feeling in my throat that's telling me to enjoy every last minute of next week. I just know I'm gonna miss it. I'm gonna miss the morning zoom calls, I'm gonna miss having collective melt-downs with @kyril-s and @whitebearbrooks, I'm gonna miss being tutored. And what I'm gonna miss the most is having a virtual safe space where I can be myself.

Once more I'm facing the end of a learning environment and the beginning of a career path, and once more I'm scared and excited to see what's ahead. This time though, I feel more prepared and more sure of what I'm doing.

I'm glad I reinvented myself and I'm glad I took the time to do so.

Next week my last challenge will be presenting my first client's project and I'm excited to see it through.

As always, thank you for reading and I'll keep you posted on the project outcome!

[lphforero]

7 weeks and....we're back to therapy!

If you've been reading these posts (first of all, thank you so much for putting up with me) you've probably noticed a pattern. I go from excited to exhaust in a matter of paragraphs, which has been going on for the last seven weeks.

I knew transitioning careers was a big decision. I considered it for years, read about it, thought about it, imagined all different scenarios I could encounter, and talked to people who did the same and warned me it would be hard but fulfilling. It was, by no means, a decision made on a whim, and I waited until I felt I had full strength to face the challenge.

I've learned so much, evolved so much, and shared so much. In the last two weeks, I worked on my own to develop a SaaS product that was designed to get rid of small business owners' anxiety when dealing with their company finances, and the end result was amazing! And I dare say, not only I delivered something I was proud to show and get feedback on from a Lead Designer in Amazon, but the whole process made me feel strong and confident of my own capabilities.

And yet, the fact that it's coming to an end brings back a monster I'm familiar with and afraid of. Once again, I can see the other side of the bridge I'm crossing, and there, the job hunting awaits. The thing with hunts is that you have to be perseverant, deal with expectations, frustrations, rejection, and uncertainty. Endure all of that to find a job you don't know if you'll like/feel comfortable in at the end. Maybe the co-workers won't like you, maybe the bosses will be disrespectful, maybe you won't learn anything and end up getting bored...I've been there more times than I can count and these negative outcomes scare me. So much.

This time around though, I know better! I can at least see some red flags beforehand and I know not to go with just whatever job I can find. Even so, this is a rough path to navigate and this is why, after 7 months of calm weather, I decided to go back to therapy before any storm comes my way.

[lphforero]

UX Factories

Same flavor, different dressing.

Let's talk about how to stand out from a crowd of new graduate UX Designers, shall we?

If you are new to this industry, you are probably excited to start your Bootcamp and go through the process of starting a new and promising career path. I know the feeling. You're probably not even scared about the number of people taking the same path you are, since it's believed that the I.T industry is growing like no other and work demand is almost infinite.

You just have to follow your Bootcamp Tutor advice, get familiar with the designing process, and showcase your geniality on platforms like Medium and Dribble by writing Design Reports. Pretty straightforward, right?

Well...yes. But you should be thinking about the number of people following the same steps as you are. I'm not saying the market is oversaturated or that Bootcamps are no good, but more and more new designers are indeed showcasing their knowledge on Medium to catch the attention of HR or PMs.

My advice to help you stand out and get your Design Reports shinier than others is:

1. Focus on insights rather than the design process.

The person reading your design report is probably familiar with the process and is most likely thinking "Ok, you did this. So what?!"

2. Take care of your case study visuals.

Think of it as another way to showcase your work and put all you have on that Visual Design.

3. Make it P E R S O N A L.

The goal is to reach both recruiters and design managers. Make your report an opportunity to show who you are as a person and leave a good impression.

[lphforero]

Ok, let me tell you...

Yes, the tingly feeling I mentioned last week and all those pink filtered words and thoughts I poured on tumbler... Let me break the past week for you so it's more digestible.

At the beginning of the week: all cool, feeling confident that I did great on the interviews for the first time, and despite all my fear and anxiety telling me otherwise, I did great on the interviews! (Little disclaimer: I had a 1:1 session with my Tutor and it helped a lot, but I still like to give myself credit for the good ).

In the middle of the week: Maybe, just maybe, I'm trying to eat more than I can have. But it's probably just my anxiety talking, let's keep pushing through! Also, whenever I feel tired, let's just procrastinate and look at pretty colors I could use later because, why not?

At the end of the week + full weekend: That was definitely not my anxiety, it was my common sense trying to reach out before the chaos started. Unfortunately, I did not listen to it. It's currently 9pm - Sunday and I wish I had a four weekend day so I could do all the things I have left for tomorrow.

Here's a fun fact to end this post: I'm one of those people that deal with accumulated work by going on YouTube and watching dumb videos for hours.

See you guys next week!

PS: This week I'm working on a Finance Manager Software for micro/small business. Just FYI.

[lphforero]

How to observe as a designer: RCI tests.

As Steve Krug says in his book "Rocket Surgery Made Easy", any usability test is better than none and there's no such thing as a usability test gone wrong, or a usability test that results in zero insights.

There are, though, different kinds of them. For this post, I'll briefly explain one of them: Remote Contextual Inquiry, or RCI.

First things first: usability tests are conducted to gather data and find insights. This can be done before, during, and after shipping a product and, as I mentioned earlier, you'll always benefit from doing it.

Now, what is RCI and what's it for?

RCI is one kind of usability test. This kind of test is usually done before starting to work on a product and it consists of observing how users would normally carry out a task. The key here is that by observing them you'll end up finding pain points in their current methodology. From here, you can start working on a product to solve those pain points and make their life easier.

Examples? You can observe how secretaries handle the booking appointments process in a dental clinic. By doing so, you may find out that they're currently storing information in more than one place and that this often creates confusion and loss of information. Now you can start working on a SaaS product that would gather all the information in one place and that would help them do their work more efficiently.

It seems pretty straightforward, right? Here are 5 steps I'd follow to put it into practice:

1. Schedule the interviews and let the users know what to expect (duration of the test, what's actually being tested, will they be ok with recording it).

2. Identify the different kinds of users and try to have them equally represented in your small sample.

3. Before starting the test, ask them to think out loud and to take notes of what they're doing and why.

4. Once you gathered all the data, sort it out and find commonalities and pain points.

5. Once you have your product features mapped out, show it to someone else that's used with that particular task. This will help you validate your product and correct any steps before starting to design.

[lphforero]

The calm before the storm.

Is it, though?

Reflecting on last week, several things come to mind. Yet, I don't want to bother you, my dear reader, who's been putting up with my long a** posts, so I'll be brief.

Let's talk about last week's mission first: re-designing and code the webpage of Gatuari, a place close to my heart for many reasons.

I got to put HTML and CSS knowledge into practice. Of course, as it was my first time doing a webpage (mind you, just a landing page and not all by myself) I felt like a newbie going for an Ironman. Every piece of code took a lot of time and concentration to pull of, and making it responsive was another marathon. Luckily, I had not only two amazing designers to share the workload with, but also two courageous and intelligent web developers who made the coding Ironman feel like a walk in the park.

What's left after finishing that 1-week re-design and code Ironman? I feel proud, happy, and reassured that this career change is the right decision for me. I'm also grateful for both the good and the bad situations I lived as an architect. All of it was necessary for me to arrive where I am now.

Now, let's look at what's ahead, shall we?

Well, there's a month of Ironhack left, and only two design projects to work on. The baby step learning environment we were in is now gone. We have to talk with people outside Ironhack and create real products. I'm scared, I'm not gonna lie. Suddenly (ok, not that suddenly, but let me be a bit dramatic, will you?) being pushed out of my comfort zone feels scary as f***. But there's also that tingly feeling of excitement in my belly. The one that tells you that great things are going to happen and that you'll enjoy all of them. Next week I'll tell you more about it. Let's see how it goes.

[lphforero]

What "having experience" means...

It's obviously not 10 minutes. That's just clickbait.

What those 10 minutes truly are is a combination of years of experience and hours upon hours of putting up the work. Nevertheless, is always helpful to be able to watch other people’s process and the advantage of this video (and others in the same YouTube channel) is that he thinks out loud, so we don’t have to guess the reason behind every design decision he’s making.

The before and after comparison is amazing and what my take on this is: organization and consistency can take your design a long way.

Hope you enjoy the video!

[lphforero]

A rollercoaster and an e-learning app.

One more week of my UX/UI Design journey has passed, and it was a weird one, I must say.

This week I was challenged with a big a** project and no team to share the workload with. Sounds fun, right?

I needed to come up with the design, branding, and business revenue ideas for an e-learning app in the short time span of a week. And just so you can’t call me a drama queen, later on, I’ll reveal a massive detail: I didn’t have to do any research at all, as the proto personas were provided along with the project briefing. At first, I thought the same thing you’re thinking right now:

“Well, the research is the toughest part. With that out of the way, I think it seems easy enough!”.

It should’ve been, but as it turns out, I feel more comfortable working with a team, bouncing ideas with other colleagues, and sharing responsibilities and decisions with others. As a result, the week ended up being a rollercoaster of feelings and yoga.

I wasn’t aware of that fact about me, but looking back it has always been like that, ever since Architecture School, where I had the most amazing and competent project partner, and we would spend nights between design decisions and some karaoke to boost our energy. I guess I like having someone to talk to and learn with while working. It also makes me feel more confident of the design decisions because they’ve been discussed, compared, and measure with someone else.

Despite all that, I managed to push through the loneliness and ended up with a pretty cool project. I played around with colors, tested different fonts, user flows, features and I even ended up coming up with a fun logo for the app. Overall, I’m proud of the final product and I guess working solo is something I can keep in mind and get better at with time, so the rollercoaster of feelings will be less intense next time. One thing I feel I’m getting better at, for sure, is receiving feedback! So that’s a win for this week.

As for next week, I don’t know what I’ll be working with yet, but I know for sure I’ll have an awesome team to work with, so I’m excited. I’ll keep you posted!

[lphforero]

Different, and yet the same.

Have you ever been in a situation when you were having people over for dinner and one of the guests had a diet restriction? If yes, I’m sure you spent time thinking weather to cook something specially for that one person or to adapt your menu to their restrictions and offer the same for everybody. The easiest solution seems to be the later, wouldn’t you agree? This way you don’t have to come up with two different menus and juggle all the different cooking times, instructions and ingredients.

But why am I talking about food when I usually only talk about UX/UI Design? Well, the previous metaphor applies when designing an app that will be used both in Android and iOS systems.

Both have their own Design System composed of rules, constraints and principles standards to guide decision-making and create a cohesive product. To put it simple, each has their own design philosophy and understanding of what is “right” and “wrong” for their users.

Yet aren’t all the users’ human beings?

Source.

From my designer point of view, it’s a no brainer that the simplest solution is to adapt my design to match both Android and iOS standards, and avoid the hassle of creating two different versions of the same product. After all, “if it works for a human being, then it simply cannot be wrong, even if it doesn’t follow established patterns”.

With that in mind, I gathered five important interactions to keep in mind when designing an app that works for both systems:

1. Main navigation should be easily reached with the thumb.

Ideal placement of navigation for the thumb zone, according to UXmag. Source.

2. Users must have control of their actions and be able to go back to the previous screens at any point.

Source.

3. Action buttons must be used only once in each screen and should be responsible for primary actions only.

Source.

4. Any animation must be used only when necessary and must feel natural for the user.

Source.

5. Touch targets must be big enough to be easily tapped or clicked.

Source.

Hope this come in handy the next time you have to design a product to be used in both Android and iOS.

[lphforero]

No complaints.

The third week of this roller coaster of exhaustion and excitement has come and gone, and I’m left with a feeling of achievement that I haven’t felt in a while. I feel happy, tired and, most importantly, so proud of myself.

This week we were challenged to go, yet again, one step further into our new career proficiency goal. This time we needed to add a feature to an existing mobile platform. Ours was to add a karaoke feature to Spotify. How was it, you ask? I’m not going to lie, it was…AWESOME.

I got paired with a teammate that could work hard, keep a schedule, and maintain a high level of quality work while always keeping a light and funny mood. Who doesn’t want to work like that, right?! Even though we had to deliver a High-Fi prototype for the first time, which included mimicking branding, interaction architecture and user flows of Spotify, we manage to achieve our goal and present a high-quality final product in time.

Now, apart from having a great person to share the workload with, we got to put in practice how to do animations in Figma. That was an experience. It made me feel like the first time I opened a 3D modeling software in architecture school. I was amazed, existed, and scared at the same time. I know for experience though, that practice makes perfection, so I’ll keep working on my animation skills. They are really fun to work with and I’m excited to see what I’ll create in the future.

See you next week!

[lphforero]

"Good design is when I like it. —Everybody"

[Design] is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. —Steve Jobs

I may be bias here (and it’s not because I’m an iOS user, but because of my architecture background) but truer words have never been said… Except they were! In the 1950’s Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, along with other big names in architecture history, who where already changing the world by starting the Modern Movement.

I bet all of you readers have hear the phrase “less is more”, right? When Mies van der Rohe said it, he basically meant that the functionality of the elements that composed an object, as well as the object itself, were more important than being beautiful. Since then, something well-structured and functional is consider real beauty. And beauty is different from aesthetic, but I won’t open that can of worms now.

Mind you, I don’t mean that having less will always lead to good design, or good architecture. A “good” less in design would be, for example, reducing the number of clicks and improving the user flow so that the interaction it’s more intuitive. A “bad” less, on the other hand, would be making things so minimalist to the point were the user can’t complete a given task because he can’t find thing.

As you can see, there’s a fine line between functionality and just trash design. That can be learned from theory and, especially from practice. I’ll be sure to keep practicing!

[lphforero]

Rumor has it that Week 2 of Bootcamp ended…

Brief disclaimer before we start: I’ve been told to pour more thoughts and feelings into these weekly posts, so I’m sorry if it gets too long. Just giving the people what they want.

I don’t really know, but people are saying that we’ve survived Ironhack UX/UI second Bootcamp week. I honestly can’t tell time apart anymore, and mind you, it’s not because I lost my sleeping routine, but more because I’ve had no weekends since this started.

I feel bad admitting this because I know a lot of my classmates did lose sleep this week, but there was only one day that I went to bed after mid night. I guess this is something I have architecture school to thank for (and all those absurd deadlines and impossible deliverables that got me used to short deadlines and long working hours).

Week two had two major challenges for me: dealing with failure and having no teammates to bounce ideas with.

Let’s talk about failure first:

As a UX/UI Designer I’m expected to know how to fail fast and see it as a win. This is quite challenging and something I’ve been learning and dealing with since day one of bootcamp. You see, while studying and working as an architect I was trained to look for mistakes and fix them before the client would notice them. Presenting a client with something less than perfect was just not possible and so you can guess why doing the opposite is so difficult for me. Coming up to a Usability Test with a half-done prototype and just let the user imagination fill in the blanks has been hard, but at the same time fascinating! This week I was able to see how the user’s imagination helped me design more intuitive and optimized screens each time I iterated. It was pretty cool!

Now for my second struggle: having no teammates.

I have mixed feelings about this one. In one hand, I could manage time more freely but on the other hand, I got stuck early on because there was no one to discuss my doubts with. Remember how I said I only went to bed late once last week? That was Tuesday and the reason behind it was that I couldn’t move on from processing quantitative data. I, for some reason, felt I needed to process all 93 survey answers...Off course I had no time to do that! The only way I could move on from that was sharing my thoughts and opinions with a former teammate. For future solo projects I’ll be sure to talk to my colleagues earlier and save a couple of hours of sleep.

One last thing and I’ll be finished - and thank you so much if you’ve read this far.

I’m really proud of my final result! Even though doing all the sprint steps by myself was hard, It boosted my confidence when, by the end of the week, I saw I was capable of doing it and having something good to show for.

Let’s see how this week goes. I have high hopes for it!

[lphforero]

Crits (wtf?!)

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, let me give you some context:

Imagine you’re working on a project by yourself. You’ve been working on it nonstop, carefully thinking every step and every decision on it. You’ve basically gave it your all and you’re proud of the outcome.

Now, you must share your masterpiece with the world! The first ones to see it are your colleagues. You proudly explain to them all the process of creating your work of art, all the struggles you overcome and how you got to the point where you are now.

And now, comes The Crits.

Your colleagues, who have a 1 sec knowledge of your project, start to tell you ~things:

- What where their first impressions on your masterpiece (off course, they’re gonna be amazed by it, right?!)

- What they’re curious about, or any doubts that pop to mind (nothing, right?! You just explained everything perfectly!)

- You can ask them questions (you have none, because you already considered all possible outcomes and solved them)

- They can give you suggestions (yeah, right…as if they would know better than you what’s best for your masterpiece)

Okay. That’s not actually how it is.

You are not the Da Vinci of modern Design and you do not have all the answers and solutions for your project. When we work alone on a project, it’s easy to get absorbed by your own impressions on, it and seeing potential improvements is hard.

The Crits sessions solve this problem for us. We get to bounce ideas with other designers as if they were working with us on the project and get their insights (doubts and things their curious about) and suggestions (e.g., maybe they would prioritize some features more than others). By the end of this you have a lot of useful comments and potential improvements for your project, so I really recommend doing it.

PS: I’m not saying Crits are easy. I advise you to go for a walk, do some yoga or pet your cats (or all of the above) before going back to your notes and start thinking about which of them you’ll apply to your masterpiece.

[lphforero]

"For much of its existence, design was all about convenience. We wanted to hide technology so that users are not distracted into thinking about the tools they use."

—Evgeny Morozov

[lphforero]

Week One Survivor

Cool stuff: crazy 8's, prototyping and testing.

Not so cool: re-design on top of your previous work and, two hours later, realizing that you shouldn't have.

Exited for what's to come!

[lphforero]

But seriously, it was all I expected and a bit more! 🎉

Cool classmates, teachers that have years of work experience in the field, really engaged T.As that are willing to help any time 🤩

The best part? I would have to say the class organization. I was a bit sceptical about the online classes, but it was just perfect! ✨👌🏼

Let's see how the rest of the week goes! 🚀😎