SENPAI Design 101: The Journey Begins (Week 1)

Some days ago I got a mail that could change my life.

Quick Intro

My name is Osaz (actually Osemudiamen Harvey Ehiabhi but no one calls me that - except maybe my mom 😂).

I’m a Building Construction student who loves to Read, Doodle, Sing, Interact with New Technology, Write(sometimes 😁). I have a lot of varying interests (A Jack of all trades of some sorts) but I’ve always wanted to do something in Design and I believe Design might be the binder between all these interests.

My Design Story

You know that feeling of being stuck. Not knowing what direction to go in. If you can relate, then you know how frustrating it can be. I’ve been stuck there for a while. Learning everything (Front-end web development, Design, Data Science etc) aka Information Overload but not knowing where to go from there or if that’s really what I want to do.

With design it hadn't been much different, if anything it had proven to be more difficult. I've followed designers in many fields, joined communities, watched from the distance but never moved from my spot in the shadows.. Maybe it was just me being scared, maybe it's Impostor Syndrome or the fear that I'd never be as good as the people I look up to, maybe I just didn't know where to start.

I have decided to change that.

SENPAI Design 101

I’d been following Senpai on Twitter and Instagram for a while. I saw it as an Indigenous Design Agency but I never expected that I’d have the privilege to be under their tutelage.

Until weeks ago when a post was made about starting a course. I shook it off, scared of the possible costs. Only for a friend (and fellow Senpai learner) to tell me days later that applications had opened and it would be for the affordable price of Nada! I signed up for the course immediately...no time!(Please don’t judge me😂).

When I got the acceptance mail, I was pretty excited (honestly I still am) because it felt like the answer to a prayer I didn’t know I had prayed; a chance to get direction along the design path without breaking the bank on a platter of Gold. Thank you!

I quickly joined my Whatsapp group and began connecting with my Teammates. Introduced myself via Voice notes (not such an easy feat, trust me).

I couldn’t wait to begin learning.

But time moved so slowly

Work Begins

2 days later, the tasks came in the mail.

I was in bed resting because I had just been diagnosed with some form of Malaria, had a banging headache. I also had assignments and I was out of data (The Struggles of a Broke Nigerian Student 😂)

Tasks
Tasks included:

Listening to 2 lengthy podcasts

Watching 4 YouTube videos

Reading 4 Articles

I jumped out of bed immediately and trekked to my favorite free Wi-Fi spot in Unilag (if you know you know), watched and downloaded the resources. Thankful for free Wi-Fi!

First Exercise

The first exercise required us to identify websites whose designs we loved and those we hated.

Easy right? Well... Yeah It was except we had to give reasons for our dislike or like. It was then I realized that I didn't have so many concrete reasons beyond how it looked or I didn't know how to describe what was wrong and that left me thinking about the thin line between good design and bad design (and how much I need to improve my knowledge of Design Vocabulary).

By the way we had to do this using Figma, an online design tool which a lot of people had never used before. All these before 12:00am of the next day.

Arranging everything in an orderly manner almost had me giving up (not because I wasn't doing stufr right but because people kept on raising the standard with their work 😂 and I didn't want to carry last) but in the end I can say I prevailed! Hehe

Here’s the link to my work

Second Exercise

Well the second exercise is what I've just done with this post because Designers need to be able to communicate their thoughts across properly.

So what have I learned so far?

All materials were pretty helpful as they gave a proper introduction and approach to design. This was necessary because apparently most of those had this notion that design was purely about Aesthetics, all about looks and appearance but I’ve learned that design is more than that.

"Design needs to be seen as more of a Verb than a Noun".

"Design is more about creative ways of solving problems. We all have problems."

This week I learned how to "See Design".

"It's not just enough to say that a Design is good or bad because of a gut-feeling."

There are questions that need to be asked, procedures to be followed - an entire Design Thinking process that can be followed for all spheres of life.

Closing Remarks

I’m grateful to everyone who has helped so far. Especially Henry who has been a really humble and relatable Senpai indeed, guiding us along.

To the Awesome Team DEO, we'll keep going forward. This is just the beginning!

Thanks for reading.

N. B. This is my First Medium post and I'd really appreciate all the support and feedback especially from Designers.