My Design Reflection for 2017

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This year, the product team completed design phase for 4 major projects: Sciforum, Sciprofile, Sciforum Android, MDPI Books, along with other smaller projects, such as a branding/homepage design for JAMS (Journal Article Management System), Statistics (dashboard for publishing industry data) design, mdpi.com homepage update to reflect company growth, Susy UI style guide reorganization, virtual conference exhibition hall 3D modeling.

For Sciprofile project, I have been consulting a book on Design Systems by Alla Kholmatova while approaching the design. Using UI mapping technique to catalogue necessary UI elements for the site that match the product’s “design principles”. When the functional patterns are ready, then use moodboard technique to explore perceptual patterns.

This year, I broadened my practice across desktop and Android design, tested the water of 3D interactive prototype for desktop. I further honed my skills in tackling behavioral design problems, thinking designs through user goals and tasks, creating a coherent product experience. The later phase of Sciprofile made me realize my lacking of knowledge on systematic graphic design principles, which motivated me to pursue a professional program in Graphic Design in 2018 and 2019.

I work at a co-working space, so people here are from all walks of life working on any possible projects. Luckily I met a iOS app creator and developer who is interested in exchanging skills. So for 2 months, we meet twice a week for 1 hour each, on Monday I help him with iOS app UX issues, and on Wednesday he helps me with my design portfolio development. This exchange tremendously helped us improving our own skills, also enriched our working life at a co-working space.

2018 will be a great year for the collaboration and interaction among our company’s digital products. For the first time we brought the whole suit of products out on the company’s homepage and journal’s homepage, inter-linking product functions, to encourage usage of all innovative tools to push open access publishing and content consumption.

Looking back, I saw what I lack in design. Looking forward, I see there’s so much a designer can achieve with the knowledge in our field and the support of the digital design community. 2018 will be a year of taking actions.

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Lulu Wang
Cultura: The Voice of HCI/d at Indiana University

Sr. Product Designer at BILL ~~Indiana University HCI/d alumni~~Design & Jiu Jitsu