SEEK Asia’s First Design Workshop for UX: Through the eyes of a copywriter
We may be late to the party, but here’s the start of SEEK Asia Lab’s 2017
The first day (10th January 2017)
As 2016 lit its final flames, 2017 arrived with a renewed hope in the air, filling the crevices of shattered visions and fragmented dreams from yesteryear, rekindling our spirits to create a better world once again.
That same spirit had sparked within the Design Team in SEEK Asia. On 10th January 2017, we embarked on a mission to rediscover what UX Design really meant to our team and how our designs would affect the whole organisation.
Morning session (9am — 1pm)
I started the day, as I usually do, with breakfast ready on my office desk. While my laptop glares openly at me as I ate, I waited with anticipation as to when my colleagues from Hong Kong would arrive.
We’ve been working together almost immediately after I joined SEEK Asia back in April 2016, but due to the distance of Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong, most of us have only met each other through our Slack accounts.
9am struck and the Hong Kong team arrived at the office. We started the workshop almost immediately after that. But before we dived deep into the lessons ahead, there was still a matter of getting to know one another.
As previously mentioned, the respective teams in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong have been working remotely in our own countries. Not because we didn’t want to meet up, but because it was economically impractical given the cost of travelling these days.
Which was why, the ice-breaking game was important to us as it allowed more communication between the two teams. We even had to write each other’s strengths and weaknesses on a piece of paper that was pasted on our backs. And this was the first time some of us met!
But nonetheless, it was definitely a fun activity to be had and we were extremely excited for what was in store for us throughout the day.
We then moved on to the introduction of Persona and User Journey.
A session that was only scheduled for an hour and 30 minutes, we stretched the time provided beyond its limitation, all for the sake of fully understanding how users felt when they’re in the state of using our products. Which for us usually meant that they’re ready to look for a new job.
But first we needed to know, who was this supposed user?
During the first half of the session, we were tasked to create a personification of a normal user (or in our lingo jobseeker), so that we could then map out a User Persona.
Each of us began creating a version of a personality that we knew and divided their existence into four different quadrants; a simple sketch of them, their market demographic, their behaviours and their needs as a user.
It was fun to see, that at some points of our lives, we’ve met the same type of jobseekers before. A repeating theme that was most noticeable in our persona creation exercise was The Fresh Graduate. Which was why he was picked to represent the User Journey.
With the context that was given, we took The Fresh Graduate through three different phases that he would have to go through when trying to start his career; before he has a job, during the interview stages and after he’s secured a position.
We further elaborated each phase by looking through the actions that are available for him to take, the platforms or channels that might enable his actions and most importantly, his emotional and mental state when going through these phases.
Through this journey, we found new ideas on how we, as the Product Design team, could help The Fresh Graduate secure a new job, while keeping his sanity intact.
Lunch (1.30pm — 2.45pm)
After the long session of Persona and User Journey, we went out for a quick lunch. I had to admit, my legs were already wobbling by this time, and I wished we didn’t have to walk to the place that we were intending to go. But as it is the best Pan Mee in this area, I reluctantly dragged my feet to move.
And at the same time, it was good to get out of the office and bond with my colleagues over a hot meal. It’s the first time that we’ve all sat together to have lunch between the two teams like this, and it’ll be a while before we can do this again (because, you know, travelling fares aren’t cheap?)
Evening session (3pm — 5.30pm)
Supposedly, the User Research 101 session was to be presented somewhere around 1.30pm. But as we had a late lunch (and much coffee afterwards), we had to push this session to 3pm and immediately rescheduled our next sharing for the morning of 12th January 2017.
Personally, I have always had a love-hate relationship with researches ever since I was a child. I liked doing the experiments, but I never liked preparing the ingredients or hypothesis and then creating a conclusion afterwards. Which was why I anticipated this as being my least favourite subject for the day.
But just as Cher Horowitz from Clueless discovered that she was wrong about everything, so was I when it came to User Research.
We started the session with nothing more than identifying what each of us really wanted to know about a product; whether it’s how effective a function is or how users would feel if we did a massive overhaul on our pages.
We were told we could find out everything and anything about SEEK Asia, as long as it was specific.
Yes, this activity was actually helping us polish up a long forgotten skill (at least for me) that most high schoolers learn today; identifying a problem. And from identifying the problems that we had, we were then able to further categorise them through the three simple questions below:
User or Product? Is this problem, user or product related? Who is the main subject?
Generative or Evaluative? Does this problem generate ideas or evaluate them?
What or Why? Can you measure this problem from a quantitative or qualitative value?
We went through each and every problem that we had in mind, finally learning that each segmentation had different research methods to help us solve problems, whether it be surveys, polls, face-to-face interviews, analytics, statistics or market researches.
By the end of this activity, I could safely say, that my brain was utterly and completely short-circuited by the amount of practical knowledge that I had to pick up in less than eight hours. I was thankful that everyone decided to go for dinner as a group that night, as cooking was the last thing I wanted to do after a long day of learning and application.
Dinner (7pm — 9pm)
Having decided where to eat, we hopped onto the KL Monorail Station which is just 5 minutes away from our office building. From there, we headed off to Pavilion where an abundance of indulgent food stores were awaiting for our patronage.
We picked a cosy restaurant near the entrance which served Latin food as its main dishes. I was more than happy to comply with this food choice as Latin food equates to burritos and tacos in Malaysia. And when there’s burritos and tacos, there’s cheese and that’s the one food I will never say no to.
Surrounded by a lively and cosmopolitan ambience, we chatted away the night with topics ranging from healthcare to travels. All the while, further cementing our bonds with one another. It was definitely a memorable day to be had, but all of us were tired from the day’s sessions. And so we headed back to our respective homes, awaiting for more knowledge from the days to come.
