UX-Design Unit part 2: What did I learn?
What were your learning goals at the beginning of the unit?
This is my second UX Design project, in the previous project called “Voyage: Through the Centuries” when I was first introduced to UX design it was very new to me. I made some mistakes in the designing stage as well as the planning stage therefore I made some goals in this project so I can begin this project with a clear plan. I want to improve some skills so I can adopt these new skills and keep them for my future web media career. Here are 3 learning goals I began with:
- Produce the digital prototype using Adobe photoshop so I can develop Photoshop skills.
- I want to understand my user testers meaning and develop my communication skills in the interviewing and user testing stage.
- Make sure the element of filter bubbles is relevant and present in the designing stage such as in the prototypes, landing page and concept videos.
What have you learned?
- As we were lucky to visit a secondary school I had a chance to interview many young teenagers (who were the target audience for my project) and to get them to talk I made sure to wait for them to settle and stay calm and then approached them first as many were shy. I learned to be patient and take control of situations to make sure I get engaging and comfortable answers from them.
- By the end of the project after looking at many of the secondary school students work I realised if I wanted to make a filter bubble project it does not have to be a website or app specifically about trying to get across what filter bubbles are. A secondary students project which I admired was an app which asks for all your measurements and filters and the internet generated online shopping websites to cater for your body type. This inspired me to understand filter bubble from a different perspective rather than the direct approach I took upon.
- I was able to understand what concept videos are and realised what you had to include by looking at Kickstarters guide. It had to be about the creator of the product as well as the product.
What obstacles have you found?
In my paper prototype I drew some sketches of characters and found it difficult to create the same drawing in a digital format during the digital prototype stage. As a person with no experience of using photoshop I found it hard to create a body for the heads of each character.
Another obstacle I came across is trying to complete prototypes on time as we had a short deadline for this project.
1Give concrete examples rather than stating something generic like Finding out answers to a problem online is difficult
How did you go about solving the problems you encountered?
To overcome the issue of creating a body for my characters using photoshop, I decided not to make bodies and add a pastel toned circle background behind the head to make the faces of the characters stand out instead. This saved me time and I was pleased with the outcome of my designs.
To overcome the issue with time keeping for my prototypes I looked at my class time table and to finish the prototypes on the weeks the task was given. Fortunately I was able to complete each prototype on time.
What could you improve in your project?
Things I could improve in the designing stage of my digital object is if I added more character animations. So far I have 3 characters which is the police man, young holiday goer and doctor. This puts a limit of what users can pick therefore I could add 3 more characters for a variety of characters for users to pick from. Another improvement would be to make the character generator work in my final prototype. At the moment nothing happens when clicking on the generate button therefore I could have added another screen with different characteristics in the generator box to show the function of that feature.
What do you intend to improve in your personal and professional skills?
Improvements I could make for my personal life is to be more organised and complete tasks when given. I tend to group tasks together according to relevancy such as if I am staying at home for the weekend I would complete Student finance application as well as buy groceries for my house. However I need to change this and start organising things in a time frame so give myself deadlines for everyday tasks. This will help me get things done in the correct time and help me for the future when working in the web media industry. I also want to improve my punctuality as I tend to not show up on time for a lot of events and in general for everything. I do believe it is because of my poor judgement of time and I hope to fix this from now on as it is very important for when I do work for somebody in their business.
