Journal entry — General Assembly UXDI — week 7 & 8
I think the last 2 weeks have been the toughest although we only worked on our portfolio and did some lessons in the class. It is hard to write about yourself and build a responsive website from scratch. At the end of week 02, we will be presenting our case study on a live portfolio (on our owned domains) to an Industry Professional.
I applied the UXD approach to my portfolio design as well. All other parts of the process worked well except the development of the actual site. I did some research and shortlisted Webflow and Squarespace. Both are great tools and there are good resources available on YouTube. The learning curve for Webflow is a bit steep as compared to Squarespace. I found the UI for Webflow a bit overwhelming and confusing. My biggest struggle with Webflow was auto-adjusting the changes I made on web vs mobile. To justify my reasoning for Webflow, I used a grid layout to build a site from scratch as well as tried a template but may be due to lack of time (2 weeks) and patience. It’s a great tool and I definitely plan to learn Webflow and apply my HTML/CSS skills after I complete my GA cohort.
I picked Squarespace 7.1 as the structure of each template is solidly built and the UI is easy to use. You can easily create your own structure using elements such as spacer and code in the same block or add multiple blocks. The only issue I see is that the spacer can be only squeezed to a limited size which is around 40–50px (I didn’t measure but it appears). Before you begin work on your chosen template you should check the style page and edit it as per your preference. I picked the ‘Nolan’ template on which I made the following changes before I began adding content
- Color palette
- Font type and size of the Header and Paragraph
- Button styling and padding
When you add a text block, you can change the font type and size by selecting — Header or Paragraph type. To make it Italics — ‘Ctrl + I’. If you want to change the background of the text block you will have to add ‘markdown’ instead of ‘text’. Here is a sample of markdown:
I designed my logo and portfolio layout using Adobe XD. To be honest, the HiFi layout I designed and the website I built using Squarespace don’t’ look the same. Since the look and feel is a ‘could have’ for me, I have added it to the future development list.
I was successfully able to get my portfolio ready with 02 case studies by Friday for the review. Finally, I got my portfolio reviewed and we had 10 mins to present it and then the reviewer had 10 mins to give the feedback. I presented my case study on Redesigning Circle Furniture’s website to a Senior UX Designer at Walgreens. I didn’t know the reviewer’s details until 2 mins before our meeting. I was thrilled to present my case study, but the 10 mins just felt short to explain my work and design thinking. I got some great feedback on the case study on my portfolio, my storytelling was good but the case study layout needs some work.
We have a second round of portfolio review next week with our instructor team and after that, I will rework and refine my portfolio.
During the working hours 10 AM-5 PM, we also had lessons. In week 01 we learned Product Management, Technology Constraints, Working with Developers, and also had a chance to have a conversation with a Guest Speaker who is a Sr. Developer. I have worked with Dev teams before and the developers I worked with were kind to me, so they never expressed their pain points but guided me. I could relate to our guest speaker and it was great to hear the techniques and dos and don’ts. This week we also had a deadline to submit our portfolio’s content draft to get feedback from the instructor team.
In week 02, we did whiteboard challenges and learned Business Analytics and SDLC Methodologies. I am just listing the topic names, but the learning sessions are very engaging and intense. We not just learn theory but also practice. That’s the best part of this cohort.
On Friday we also got introduced to our next project, and it’s a group project with an actual.. Real client. My Project group is super excited, nervous, and anxious — all at the same, time as we enter the real world of UX. I am extremely stoked to work on an actual project to apply my knowledge and learning. We read the project brief, talked about our strengths and weakness, assigned roles for the project by voting and discussing, and scheduled the project kickoff meeting with our client.
I am thrilled and happy to be chosen as UX Strategy Lead for this project and the facilitator of our client meetings.
I will post my next journal entry at the end of our client project. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions or questions please do not hesitate to contact me.
Lastly, here is the Boston skyline picture I took today on my long walk
For the next 4 weeks (including the holiday break), we worked on our Client Project — Varuna Tech Inc. to design their water monitoring dashboard for the Water Utility Professionals. It was a research intense project and you can read the case study here.
Feel free to contact me if you want to talk about designing your portfolio, tweaking Squarespace templates, or just chat about anything. :)
Thank you very much for reading. I appreciate your support.
