When I started the journey I knew I was going to learn a lot, but I would have never imagined how much I would love it.
I have always felt a bit lost when it comes to determine what I wanted to do for a living. It is true though is that I have been passionate about creativity in all sorts of way since I was a child.
And talking about creativity, this client’s project requires A LOT of it. It is an ambitious product which objective is to prevent anxiety, stress, burnout and depression in the work environment thanks to an AI. I am pretty sure that my colleagues and I will develop the best solution for the target audience and the client but is driving us crazy to achieve that 🤯 I will come with more updates in a couple of days, I promise, for now I will open my Figma file and continue working!!
I can’t believe that it’s been 7 weeks since I started this journey. 7 weeks since I was extremely scared about how I would manage to go through this adventure and how successful would I be.
Before starting the bootcamp I was scared about everything: not getting along with my colleagues, to not be good enough for this, not finding a job, blablabla... and now it is metamorphosing into the typical Impostor Syndrome ✌🏼 It sounds super cliché, I know, but I have always been a fan of clichés.
Just kidding... Let’s get serious for a minute (or half of it). What is really happening to me is that for the first time in my life I find myself alone in front of a blank future with LOTS of opportunities. When I finished school I knew I was going to High school, and after that I was going to college and after that I started with the bootcamp and now, well now I know that I want to work as a UX/UI Designer but it all depends on me and my outcomes and efforts.
Being in the week 7 feels like looking at a gorgeous and long sunset which is exciting but scary at the same time: exciting because the day is coming to an end and you have learnt a LOT from it, but scary because you don’t know if a sunny or rainy day is coming...
We live in a VERY competitive society so we spend our lives trying to stand out to differentiate ourselves from the rest, and this struggle becomes bigger within the design industry.
After reading the article The case study factory I have been even more conscious about how important it is to have personality and do not standardise your projects and case studies if you want to be remembered (apart from hiring managers) by other designers who will feel inspired by your work.
I am happy to have come across this article days before starting with one of the most important case studies I have developed (to the date) so I can put into practice all these thoughts to be more creative to present and talk about my work.
What a week.... Besides having to think about the project I am now mother of a very naughty puppy, so you can imagine my average sleeping hours these days.
I'm not going to lie, Monday and Tuesday were complicated days: I didn't even know what theme to choose for the project. Talking to my father I found out that he had some software-related problems in his own work that could be improved. So on Wednesday I went to his dental clinic to see the system he uses and interviewed him and seven of his colleagues.
When I had the research part done I started with the ideation process to be able to present something to my fellow designers on Thursday since we had a feedback session. Thanks to this "crits session" I discovered that I had to make improvements in relation to information architecture, and that's what I'm going to do now.
First I will make a couple of improvements to the prototype in mid-fi, I will do two rounds of usability testing with the corresponding iterations and on Sunday I will dedicate it to define the branding attributes of my product.
Next week I will tell you how the final result is!
Things are getting serious now... I will be working on a two-weeks project to develop a B2B SaaS Web App 🤯 Isn’t that exciting?
To do so, I will have to go through a profound research process that requires some planning:
Firs of all, I will have to conduct some interviews to dig deeper into the field and find common pain points within the industry’s every day activities. This will help me develop the problem statement so I can kick off a task analysis following the RCI methodology:
1. Identify users: This consist of reaching out to 6 different professionals of the industry who are familiar with the user flow I am willing to improve.
2. Schedule & Conduct RCI: I will be arranging with them a test where I will be observing and studying how the work flow.
3. Analyse the data: Here I will analyse the information gathered in the previous steps and check it to ensure its consistency.
Well, it's been an interesting week... Against all odds I was able to create a web page with code!
I won't fool anyone, I had a little help, and the project was a group project, but I won't let these factors make me feel less proud of the results.
This week we have been working on redesigning the website of a small business in Barcelona called Gatuari. The content restructuring and rebranding part was easy: after all, that's what I've been doing every week for the past month. It was when the code arrived that the problems arose...
Between the ages of 12 and 16 I was learning to code with C++ at school and the truth is that I was very bad at it. I didn't understand the language and when I practiced I gave up after two seconds when I saw that it didn't work. For this same reason I didn't want to end the week without having managed to get some of the code of the web we created to work. And I did it. And I am so proud of it.
Aside from ending up with a fried brain, this week I proved to myself that I am capable of developing an entire project by myself in less than a week. What a roller coaster of emotions.
We have already finished week 4 and that means that there is half a course ahead, and most importantly, that the most challenging is yet to come. This week's project consisted of developing an e-learning app along with its branding and taking into account business interests.
The truth is that I was delighted to be able to use my knowledge of the course for this project, although at some point I was played a bad trick because the "marketing" chip was turned on instead of the "design" one.
It's pretty clear to me that time has been my biggest enemy this week. Not because I didn't have time but because I didn't know how to organise it, which makes me a bit angry because I know I could have developed something even more interesting (even though I'm very proud of the final result).
I'll keep this learning to start week 5 with a new project!
iOS vs Android-interaction-design kind of headache
This is the first time I am facing a project where I have to take into consideration the different interaction design rules that iOS and Android have defined for their products.
I know I have to stick to the rules of the game, but from my point of view following these design approaches means NOT focusing the design on the user. It is a fact that an Android user will be used to Android’s interaction system, and same will happen with an iOS user, but why not developing a universal “language” for them all? As Andrew Ou said:
“With the platform based approach, we express the solution through a platform specific convention. With the human approach, we simply express the solution on a palm-sized touch screen device.”
After this quick reflection, I will be talking about the different guidelines I will have to apply on this project where I will be developing an e-learning application.
First of all, let’s meet our persona. Matthew is a 39 years old freelancer based in Singapore who is familiar with iOS software and is willing to learn about Wordpress.
Considering Matthew’s software preference, I will be working under Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and afterwards I will be designing the interaction changes needed to fit with Android’s Material Design approach.
Having said that, here are the 5 guidelines I will have to keep in mind during the design process of this project:
Tab bars: As stated in Apple’s Human interface Guidelines, “A tab bar lets people switch among different sections of an app”, and it’s always located on the bottom of the screen.
Go back: In order to allow the user to move back and forward within the application, I will have to introduce a “left-to-right” swiping gesture and a “back button” on the top of the screen.
Typography: Apple’s standard typeface is San Francisco, something that I will have to consider so the UI design of the application is coherent with the rest of the system.
Switches: Whenever introducing a feature that can be “on” or “off”, I will have to introduce Apple’s approach of using toggles.
Animations: One of the main characteristics of Apple’s system is the amount of animations, which means that I will have to include some in my application.
This week was challenging but fun! We got to work in groups with our colleagues to add a feature to an existing application. My team and I went for adding a “Friends feature” into the famous dating app Tinder 🔥
The most amazing thing about this week was the group I got to work with. Building a healthy and constructive dynamic is not easy at all, but with these two girls it was super simple. We all had equal voices when giving our points of view and respected each other’s thoughts. It was so fun to learn with them!
Time management was no our best outcome this week, however we managed to make the project work and finish all the tasks. I noticed an improvement in my Figma skills (although I still have a looooooot to learn).
I am looking forward to learn from this week’s mistakes (when it comes to the project design), gather all the feedback from my teammates and improve the project to build a better solution!
I mean, we both agree that this “13″ looks exactly like a “B”. And I’m sure that you are now looking at the image because at first you didn’t notice it was a 13.
It is impressive how easily our brain can be tricked. It is such a powerful tool but so easy to hack. This human glitch is what allows designers to create amazing illusions that trick every human’s mind.
“This week you will be working on your projects individually”, when I heard that I felt scared and motivated at the same time. Developing a whole new product, from scratch by yourself... WHAT?
Last weekend I couldn’t focus on my individual project since I was in Amsterdam, enjoying the nice weather and the last days in the city, since on Sunday I cam back to Barcelona to fully focus on my bootcamp.
On Monday I started thinking about what could I do to help people introduce a new habit to their lives, and mental health came into my mind. Is a fact that since COVID arrived to our lives, the awareness of mental health has increased and I couldn’t be more happy about that! So I went for that topic.
After some interviews I found out that a lot of people suffer from anxiety due to their phone addiction, what made me come up with product: Balance me. This application helps you block your social media for a certain amount of time while you take care of your mental health by doing yoga, meditating, walking, etc.
To be honest with you, I am very proud of the final result and about how well I managed my time.
I am not going to lie, I was nervous to go through my first crits session, but I made it 🙌It was very helpful to listen to my colleagues but also I enjoyed helping them. When developing a project by your own, you have nobody to share your results and make decisions with, so this session was super useful 🥰
First week done and first project finished 💥I am really happy with the outcome since, although my teammate and myself had to overcome a couple of issues during the process, by focusing on our users we could develop the best solution! I can’t wait for next week’s challenge 🚀
My first day in the bootcamp has been beyond my expectations (and they weren’t low!). I finally got to properly meet my teammates and start learning about UX/UI. We started taking about design process and heuristics, got to put it into practice with a couple of exercises and kicked off with this week’s project!
I am very lucky to have such an amazing teacher and TA who are making a great job to make this experience fun 🤩
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