Janice Tsai

This is me, learning about the world through the lens of user experience.

[lynnning]

My 外婆 (Grandma) was a fantastic storyteller, and I loved to hear her talk about the adventures of her youth. One of my favorites is from when she was a young woman working at a radio station, which is about how she spent her first paycheck. With her first paycheck, she bought a beautiful red raincoat that she was immensely proud of, for 外婆 had a particular affinity for red clothing. That day, she went home in good cheer and spent the night chatting with a friend while eating sweet peanut brittle, which they neglected to sweep off the table where her coat lay. In the morning, she woke up to discover that her lovely new coat had been chewed full of holes! And then 外婆 asked me, “Do you know why this happened? It was the one night that I forgot to close the window… and the mice came!” This is my favorite part of the story, because she exclaimed to me with such feeling, “喔~我好難過! Oh~ I was so ‘sad’”, evoking this specific feeling of bitter regret that a young woman feels when she has worked hard to buy something lovely for herself, only to lose it in a flash of young thoughtlessness. I know that she enjoyed telling me this story because at the time, I had just earned my first paycheck interning in Taiwan, and she knew I could relate to these moments from her youth. There was a particular way in which my 外婆 would weave stories that were rich in detail and emotion, which she tailored to specifically to her audience’s current place in life. And at 95-years old, she could talk to her 20-some-year old granddaughter in a way that instantly evoked the spirit of the young woman she had been, and could speak with great emotion about her feelings and hardships at that time, making her breadth of experience accessible and most importantly, meeting me in a place where we could understand each other. That was 外婆; the great connector of people. She was someone who intuitively understood that each struggle is unique, and because she had such empathy, she could always pinpoint how to share her thoughts in a way that we could receive the crucial points. I guess you could say that when it comes to understanding and engaging positively with people’s needs, 外婆 is my great inspiration. Rest in Peace 外婆, 12.20.2014.

[lynnning]

This week, we starting using Axure! Personally, I consider creating these flyout menus my greatest accomplishment of the week........ okay maybe just the one menu. You'll know it when you see it.

During class: "I wonder if we can attach cat gifs as a dropdown menu..."

Close enough. Hi-five, jessemoskowitz! #learning

[lynnning]

I haven't been keeping up with these (oops!), so here are weeks 2 and 3 in review! More updates to come. Once I get some sleep. :)

[rosekue]

http://uxchecklist.github.io/

[lalabirdstuff-deactivated202405]

THIS is what I need. 

[melbityux]

Good one for tonight as we wrap up our preso’s!

[lynnning]

Click Home user, you’re drunk.

[sh541-deactivated20150318]

"Your web layout should look like good ketchup tastes."

Nevan Scott, continuing his 11-day streak of killing it. (via sh541)

[quirkynerdycool]

Card Sorting 

Card Sorting is a technique for exploring how people group items, so that you can develop structures that maximize the probability of users being able to find items.  

In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups.

Is easy and cheap to conduct

Enables you to understand how ‘real people’ are likely to group items

Identifies items that are likely to be difficult to categorize and find

Identifies terminology that is likely to be misunderstood.

Two Types of Card Sorting

Open: Generative —> Good way to reveal possible categories 

Closed: Validating —> Great for for testing categories.

[melbityux]

Sugar High

[lynnning]

“This is information architecture, okay? There’s really nothing else to it.” - Nevan

[re-collimate-blog]

The best art makes your head spin with questions. Perhaps this is the fundamental distinction between pure art and pure design. While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.”

John Maeda (via re-collimate)

[lynnning]

In which we acknowledge Project #1 before moving on...

... to new and shinier projects! Project #1 really threw us into the thick of it, and definitely highlighted several improvement points for future development. Here's to making things better, one iteration at a time.

Context: My partner Alivia's problem was that she wanted be "more productive" in the mornings. Through the 4 lists (pain points, pleasure points, context, behaviors), as well as follow-up interviews, I determined that "productivity" for Alivia has to do with structuring her time in the mornings, so that she doesn't have to think or worry about what she wants to get done. The native mobile app I designed would set alarms for waking up and leaving, and send push notifications to remind her of tasks and other reminders throughout the morning. 

Iteration #1: Storyboarding In my initial sketches, I had this weird obsession with not only setting an alarm for Alivia to leave the house, but for the app the also include all of this information about the weather, and maps, estimated travel times, options of transportation... it got real crazy real fast. #featuritis

Iteration #1: Why did I sketch so many iterations of (unused) maps?

Iteration #1: Initial Sketch - that is one long-ass prompt.

Iteration #1: User Flow - crazy, I know.

User Feedback: I realized from how insane the user flow looked, that I needed to simplify and consolidate my flow. By trying to account for all these extra things in her morning that she didn't actually need, I had lost sight of the core experience I wanted to provide for Alivia. Checking in with her helped me figure out what features I could get rid of and reiterate on.

Iteration #2: User Flow - looking better! Goodbye, maps and weather.

Iteration #2: Sketches - this time with a new main screen!

Iteration #2: Some sketches from the "create a new routine" flow.

POP - Prototyping on Paper

But enough talk, try it out for yourself! It's just a rough paper mockup, and not all of the features are linked/functional, but clicking through this prototype should give you a sense of what I created.

Now on to the next one!

[lynnning]

This was how I felt Monday through Friday. Week 1 in review; a sticker a day keeps me sane and awake.

[rosekue]

User experience = making users not want to punch you in the face

via Hugh MacLeod (@gapingvoid)

[lalabirdstuff-deactivated202405]

I need to let go of perfectionism (don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, etc. etc.)and most of what we did today (a lot of sketching, user flows, storyboarding) is really pushing me to do that. Aaron mentioned a really cool idea today: “design debt.” When you put too much time into an iteration, you are in ‘debt’ to it and it’s harder to change it subsequently. Another useful vocabulary word that’s been tossed around: generative. It’s not about making things look perfect, but trying to churn out as many ideas as possible. 

To quote Anne Lamott..

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it."

[lynnning]

This definitely resonates, thank you for sharing! One of my major pain points this week was just not having enough time for everything. With a 4+ hour commute every single day, time is just not a luxury I have anymore. And it's not as if I procrastinate (much), as in the days of old (aka college) (not so old then) (pretty recent, actually): I literally come home, eat, shower, and sit down to work. But although everyone works on a time constraint, I simply take longer to do the same things as others.

When it comes to creative processes like sketching, writing or even choreographing, I take a longer time processing my thoughts than I do actually manifesting them. When I write a paper, 80% of the time is spent brainstorming and outlining the structure of ideas, rather than just writing a constant stream and then revising the crap out of it.

My friend Mark summed up my thought process best with this clincher at the end. I told him that when someone says, "Okay start sketching some ideas", everyone else will just start putting things on paper. I will sit staring at my paper for 5 minutes... and then draw a line, to which he narrated:

"This line... will become the box... that my picture goes in."

I think in flows. Things just don't make sense to me if I haven't connected as least some of the preliminary dots before making a first move. And while the top-down approach works for me, it takes a lot of time and energy. A lot more than I have. I have trouble taking pencil to paper and just drawing lines without having first processed which lines will connect, what direction they'll expand in, and wait should I be leaving room for something circular to go on top, i wonder what that might be hm, let me think about that. I simply don't know where to begin.

Once upon a time, when I was but a wee child with a messy ponytail and and wireframe glasses perched too high on my nose... I had an art teacher who made us draw in black ink. No pencils allowed! She said that if she let us use pencils, we would just keep erasing until our paper was all smudged and gross. She said to us,

"If you make a mistake, you'll just have to turn it into something else. I'll show you how to do magic!"

And given how reluctant I am to put even pencil to paper now, I have no idea how I thrived under such conditions, but I've come across some drawings from back then... and they really are magic. Oh, you drew a stump for your runner's leg? That's fine, we'll make it look like he's running forward. Or something. Maybe it's a bag of potatoes. We'll make it work.

I gotta get back to that mentality. I need to start generating more ideas in less time, to work smarter and more efficiently. One of the exercises we did this week was to draw 6 iterations of one prototype screen within 5 minutes. That was actually fantastic for me! It forced me to not think about what I was doing for once; to just draw things. That's what I need: to give myself hard limitations and force myself to produce creative work in e.g., shorter times, without erasers, maybe in speed-haiku form, etc.

For this week's presentation, I spent so much time sketching and prototyping, that I didn't give nearly enough time to consider how I was going to present my ideas. ACTUALLY forget the project, I didn't even have time to sleep. That's gotta be the most important reason I need to practice working faster and smarter - heaven knows that I can't continue to stress my body like this. That's one takeaway of the past year: I need to take care of myself. And valuing my time and energy, while respecting my creative process... is just one step towards that end.

[userexperiencehub-blog]

[lynnning]

I meant to post this photo last night with the caption "End of Week 1 with General Assembly UXDi! I'm exhausted"... except then of course I passed out before it could become reality.

Then I woke up at the crack of dawn and walked/ran a 5K (well, mostly walked). But you know, that's how it goes... "exhausted" is one word I could use to describe this week. Intrigued, wired, engaged, and inspired are also words that I could use. (Also "meta".) But more on that later!

[shaunofthered-blog-blog]

OMG, this fucking puppet is a beautiful crawler!

Nevan (via shaunofthered)

Meet the instructor(s). Everything is UX!

[lynnning]

Demystifying the terror that is sketching. Remember, it doesn't have to look pretty, just put things on the paper.