Arigato Senpai! -My Design 101 Journey.
What’s the big deal about this design thing sef?, isn’t it to just draw shapes, colour them and splash text here and there, one button that says “Submit” and voila! you have a pretty user interface ready for shipping to the front end designers. WRONG!!!
This was my perception of what UI/UX was all about. I mean don’t get me wrong, I call myself a creative and thought I knew it all and then it hit me! “You know nothing, Sofiya.”
As luck would have it, I was finally ready to go back to the basics, and this huge opportunity fell right on my lap. I made up my mind to forget all I have acquired and re-learn. ( Shoshin mode activated!!).
The Design 101 course had me like “ Ehen!, No wonder, I said it!”, as it all started to make sense. First I learnt about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Now I get why all these sports cars and beer companies keep shoving pretty ladies into their ads. Basically, it explains that basic needs have to be met first before building on other needs,then came about the Design hierarchy of needs which teaches us that before we put the ‘makeup’ on our designs, it first has to work as intended, meaning it must be functional, reliable, usable,proficient and then creative.
After the end of the first week, we were given a mission to find two websites we thought had good designs and two which didn’t sit right with us. This wasn’t difficult because I’ve had encounters with a lot of websites and I remember how they made me feel.
Moving on to the second week, I got to understand the Gestalt’s principles of design, Visual weight and hierarchy. It gave better footing in even understanding how negative space works using the principle of closure. Bonus knowledge for me!.
At the end of the second week,The assignment was to take three of these principles and give examples using them. here’s mine:
I’ve learnt so much and I realize how much I missed learning with people. Trust me being “self taught” requires help from others, you just have to be willing to learn. Arigato Senpai!! Thanks for the tutelage, You have yourself a fan.
