Journal entry — General Assembly UXDI — Week 1 & 2
I just completed 2 weeks and this is my first journal entry for this course.
It’s been 2 productive weeks of practicing User Experience skills in my User Experience Design Immersive course at the General Assembly. As the name suggests — it’s truly ‘Immersive’. In total, I will be learning and applying the UX Design techniques on 6 different projects for 12 weeks under the guidance of 2 awesome Instructors and 2 amiable Teaching Assistants.
I am hoping to share my experience and inspire someone who is planning to get into the User Experience Field.
On day 1, after a few hours of warm-up, and BOOM! First Project is introduced. I was very excited about the announcement of Project 1 as I am not the person who likes to just read the theory and wait for a few days or months before I apply it. For the next 8 days, we learned in the morning and applied the learnings in the afternoon. On the 10th day, we presented our project work.
On day 2, each of us was assigned a random classmate who was facing challenges with certain activities in their life. My random assigned partner was facing challenges in communicating with their Healthcare Provider. I interviewed her to understand her challenges, and further, I conducted user interviews with 2 more classmates who were facing similar challenges.
Due to technical issues, I failed to capture the sound on my first interview. Luckily, my shorthand note-taking rescued me. It’s always best to do a dry run when dealing with technology. I reviewed my notes and highlighted key insights from the interviews.
On Day 3, we did Affinity mapping using the Miro app which helped us derive a Problem Statement for our project. Using the same interview I worked on the current state user flows and drafted a Proto Persona.
On Day 4, practiced sketching layouts on paper. Using the ideation techniques, we time blocked ourselves to come up with ideas to solve the problems of the user on our project. We did all this in the live zoom class, and it was fun. Afternoon we went into full-on studio mode to work on the sketches for our project and work on a paper prototype using the Marvel app.
On Day 5, we learned about the ‘Feedback & Critique’ process. Later, 6 classmates reviewed my Paper Prototype. They provided me some insightful feedback and asked great questions. That made me rethink my design and user flow.
Over the weekend I practiced digital wireframing using Figma.
On Day 6, we started with learning about greyscale digital wireframes. In the afternoon, referencing the paper sketches we switched to digital wireframes. The next day, we build a digital prototype version 1.0 of our app.
On Day 8, we conducted usability testing to validate our digital prototype with 3 participants from the class. One of my participants was our instructor — Ed.
I also participated in 3 usability testing for my classmates. By the time I finished all the usability testing it was 7:30 PM. I had a quick dinner and later reviewed my notes from the usability testing which helped me derive the insights.
Also, got my first taste of UX content writing, the words we use on the frame are very much part of the designing process and they do matter.
We started the next day with learning storytelling and presentation requirements. Finished working on the digital prototype version 2.0 (greyscale) and the presentation around 1 AM.
On Day 10, We had 5 mins to present our work of weeks on the project. I struggled with squeezing all my thoughts on the work and why I took certain design decisions. Healthcare is a complex and vast topic, and my list of design considerations included security, data integrity, logistics, and identification of the patient. At the end of each presentation, we gave each other feedback on our presentation using the Slack thread.
I felt so relieved and content after the presentation. These 2 weeks went fast but I gained so much knowledge by learning and doing, and made friends.
I will try my best to keep you posted every 2 weeks. Please feel free to share your thoughts, suggestions, or drop in resources I can learn more from. I’d be happy to hear and interact with you.
Looking forward to learning and absorbing.
