The moments in between.
Live in the moment. This is a cliche mantra that almost everyone has heard at some point in their life. The present is now. Stop worrying about the future. The phrase has become the source of my newest inner monologue. When the last semester of my junior year at Michigan was severed by the outbreak of coronavirus, I was just beginning to really live out this mantra. For much of my life I have struggled with anxiety, particularly the anxiety about what will happen in the future. This anxiety particularly consumed me once I got to college, and it seemed like all that mattered was where you were going, what you were going to do after school, and how you were planning to maintain an upward trend of growth. When I started off this school year, this need to be one step ahead and to do what I thought was best for my professional development was at the forefront of my mind. When I heard about Shift, I was immediately attracted to the possibility of furthering my skills as a user experience (UX) designer and working with mentors who could help me grow. It sounded like a perfect place to expand my portfolio and create something that would scream “Hire me I am the BEST user experience designer around!”.
Now don’t get me wrong, Shift did do this for me. I am finishing up a UX project for my portfolio, and learned so much more about the principles and processes behind UX. I met peers who served as mentors, helped me prepare for interviews, and gave me constructive feedback on everything from my Shift project to my design portfolio. But my time with Shift brought me so much more.
Around the same time I was accepted into the Shift family, I started working with a startup based in Ann Arbor. I was taken in as a UX intern, which was incredible. As a newbie to Shift, I thought killing two birds with one stone and using my intern work as my Shift project would be perfect. To me, I thought it would allow me to really dive deep into my project and get more time to work on it, however this did not end up being the case. What I didn’t understand initially about Shift was that it was more than professional development, but it is about doing work that you are passionate about. It is about doing something that is your own and comes from your own heart. I realized this halfway through the year and realized I should change my project to something that I was truly passionate about. While my work with the startup was something that I was excited to do and exposed me to awesome people, I knew that the project wasn’t coming from my own brain and heart. I couldn’t control every aspect of it, as I had a team and a manager that I worked with.
For some time I debated between different new project ideas. Something I struggled with was finding a project that served as the perfect combination of passion project and professional development project. Sometime in January, I thought of the perfect happy medium project. I was inspired by the app Songkick to design my own app that allows people to keep track of concerts. Songkick tracks your favorite artists and locations to notify you when someone you like is coming in concert near you. I really enjoy using the app, and have found it to be a helpful source for keeping track of concerts I am interested in attending. However, I did not get a sense of hierarchy within the app’s current design. To me, it was hard to see what features of the app were more important and what features were not useful. I wanted to make my own version of Songkick, in the form of a new app. In order to figure out what people would want out of a concert finding app, I created a survey asking about people’s experience with finding and attending concerts. In order to create my survey, I created a map detailing all my question ideas. I then went through the map, scratching off questions, adding questions, and editing current ones. I then met with a member of the core team who specializes in UX to go through the survey and make final changes. When I finally had my questions ready, I published my survey through Qualtrics. The data from my survey was incredibly useful. I used affinity mapping to organize the data into smaller insights, which I then used to create an information architecture of my new app.
After creating the information architecture, I began sketching wireframes for my new app. This step allowed me to quickly get my ideas out. The wireframes served as a good starting point for when I moved onto low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes. I created my prototypes using Figma. After I had a working prototype made, I was able to complete user testing with 4 subjects via Bluejeans. This was my first time conducting a usability test, and I found it to be extremely helpful going forward with my designs. Now, I have reached the final stages of designing.
The title of my project is Unmissable. I was inspired to use this name based on the feeling I get after I attend a concert. You have this feeling of nostalgia the minute it is over, and realize that nothing you experience will ever be exactly like that. In February I was able to attend a small concert performed by 070 Shake. I was completely blown away by the show, and I distinctly remember my friend saying that she wouldn’t be able to see her perform again because nothing else would be as intimate and moving as the small show we saw. It was unmissable, so much so that even seeing 070 perform again would not be the same. What makes Unmissable different from Songkick is that it incorporates a friends feature and shows a distinct hierarchy of content through its design. From my survey responses, I gathered that people choose to attend concerts when an artist they like is performing or when their friends are going to a concert. I used these insights to organize the app’s content.
One particular challenge I faced with this project was the feeling of imposter syndrome. I often would doubt my choices during the UX process, thinking “I am no expert”. Getting started with a new step would be difficult for me, as I was often unsure if I was going about things the right way. However, getting to talk to peers in my sandbox and other mentors in the club made me realize that the UX process is messy. There is no clear path. You can take two steps forward, then turn left, then go back to the beginning, and then jump twelve steps ahead. It is a constant cycle of iteration after iteration, so there is often no right or wrong way to go about it. My version of the process was not wrong, it was simply one out of a thousand ways one could go about it. Another challenge I faced was remembering that my project was centered around users. User is in the phrase user experience, yet it can often be hard to remember to put yourself in the users’ shoes. I saw this during my usability tests. My participants would notice things that I hadn’t seen, which opened my eyes to just how biased and narrow-sighted you can be as a designer.
Pursuing this project allowed me to work on something I was passionate about, while also learning more about the UX process. I designed a survey, created an affinity diagram, structured the app’s information architecture, and completed usability tests to collect data that I could base my designs off of. I have learned a lot from fellow UX fanatics in Shift, and feel much more confident going forward in my UX career.
But what Shift really taught me was how to live in the present. Three shift seniors helped me see my life in this new way, along with my own self. They showed me that college and Shift aren’t about what lies at the end, but all the small moments in between. It is about the nights spent participating in Fuck It Ship Its, screaming Bohemian Rhapsody at Ricks (don’t worry I am 21), sitting in the Umma cafe discussing deep thoughts, eating old cookies in sandbox, making snow angels at 2 am, and overall cherishing the random moments with friends. I learned to say yes more to random outings, even though I had early class the next day or was nearly broke or had tons of homework to complete. I learned that these four years I am lucky to experience are so special, and one day they will just stop. When coronavirus hit, I realized more than ever that I will not remember crying in the Mason Hall bathroom after class or failing an exam. I will remember the small moments in between. With the looming possibility of coronavirus affecting next school year, what is supposed to be my senior year, it is hard to not worry about the future. It is hard to not regret any time I didn’t follow my heart, make a spontaneous decision, or regret not forming relationships with new friends sooner. But I have to rope myself in and say “live in the present”. I can’t change things by worrying about what could have been and what is going to be. Instead, I have to take things each day at a time and smile about the happy memories I am lucky to hold in my mind.
