Life After GA

 

Post-UXDi GA Life

It has now been a week since I completed General Assembly's UXDi, but there is still plenty to do!

 

Workshop Topics

Even though we're officially done, we were encouraged to come back for a few workshops this week!

  • Interviews
  • Negotiations
  • Imposter Syndrome

 

Creating a GA Profile

We sent in our GA profiles for publishing, and now you can see mine here!

 

Portfolio Work

You may notice that you are now reading my blog at rachelmsweet.com.  This is so that I can integrate my blog with my portfolio so that anyone checking out my portfolio can easily access my blog. This also means that if you are interested in checking out my case studies, you can find them here, under "Case Studies"!

 

 

Non-GA Activity

 

UX Book Club: Just Enough Research by Erika Hall

On Sunday, I went to my second UX book club meeting, which is hosted at GA by Julia DeBari, a Senior UX Designer at Epsilon.  We had a great discussion about user research techniques and ways to get buy-in from other people in your company.

My Takeaways:

  • Remember to take your biases into account.  Try externalizing them by writing down your biases and posting them on the wall as a reminder.
  • You will create a false sense of security if you produce items such as journey maps or personas without the research to back it up.
  • To get buy-in for research, try telling a story of the importance of research in a previous case study.
  • To get buy-in for testing throughout the design process, try making a comparison to tasting food while cooking.  If you don't taste until the end, the food will be much more difficult to fix if there is a problem.

 

About Face by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, Christopher Noessel

I've been reading this book on and off for the last several weeks and I finally finished!  About Face is an insightful and well-written book that covers many aspects of the UX process. As the book progresses, the content increases in granularity, starting with general UX concepts and eventually diving into details of interaction design.

My Takeaways:

  • "One of the most significant ways in which computers can assist human beings is presenting complex data and operations in a simple, easily understandable form."
  • As designers, we need to support 3 Types of user goals:
    • Life Goals - Who the user wants to be
    • End Goals - What the user wants to do
    • Experience Goals - How the user wants to feel
  • Design solutions should be ethical, purposeful, pragmatic, and elegant.
  • Software should behave like a considerate human being (Chapter 8, "Digital Etiquette", was probably my favorite chapter).
  • Focus on making products powerful and easy to use for perpetual intermediate users.
  • No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better.

 

recommended podcast episode

The Big Web Show, Episode 139 - Every Time We Touch with Josh Clark

Josh Clark wrote Designing for Touch, which is in the A Book Apart series.  Designing for Touch is getting added to my reading list. He provided some great insights in one podcast interview, so I'm sure there is a lot more to discover in his book!

My Takeaways:

  • Education should be cooked into design, not bolted on later.
    • Game designers provide great examples of how to provide environmental cues just at the moment they are needed.
  • Not only do we have to design for how pixels look, but also how they feel.
  • Skeumorphic design creates new opportunities to create digital objects that feel like physical objects.
  • Digital interfaces are becoming physical and physical objects are finding a digital presence.  Smartphones are letting us bring these worlds together.
    • We need to teach digital designers to behave like industrial designers and vice versa.
  • "We need to lean into the way that our brains work and expect them to work with this illusion of physicality on the screen."

 

2 days of jury duty

Not related, just thought you should know. At least there was wi-fi.

 

 

 

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General Assembly's UXDi - Week 9

Lecture Topics This Week

  • Accessibility
  • Digital Natives and Immigrants

 

Guest Lecture: Pair Design

Dan Winterberg is a Senior Designer at Cooper, while Kacie Winterberg is the only UX Designer at Cake Corporation. They both are fans of pair design, but utilize very different approaches due to the nature of their organizations.

Dan/Cooper's Approach

  • Clearly defined partnerships made up of:
    • A 'Gen': a designer who jumps into solutions, sketches multiple ideas, and goes with instincts
    • A 'Synth': a designer who begins with asking questions, making lists, and evaluating goals
    • These partnerships balance each other out throughout each project, allowing each partner to thrive at what he/she is good at.
      • This creates happy designers and better designs!

Kacie's Approach at Cake

  • No partner? Find one!
    • Make people interested by hanging pictures or other materials so that everyone can observe
    • You get to choose your partner! Find a way to relate different aspects of the design process to the work that other people are doing so that they are interested in coming along.
    • Prime these new partners for the kind of help you want to receive (this is your job, not theirs).
    • Broadcast the partnership's success to get continued support in the future!

 

Mike Monteiro Video: 13 Ways Designers Screw Up Client Presentations

Watch this video!  There were so many great points that Mike Monteiro made, but I'm going to stick with highlighting some of my favorite points.

  • Good design does not sell itself.
  • Be confident.  It's not for you, it's for the client.
  • Once you've gotten what you want, shut up.
  • 'Oh, but my boss won't let me.'  Your boss is a choice. Make better choices.
  • Never conflate helping a client reach their goal with making them happy.
  • Don't ask questions you don't want to hear the answer to.
  • Don't give real estate tours of your design.
  • You have an ethical responsibility to tell your client about problems you see.
  • Bring excitement!

 

Outcomes: GA Profile

In outcomes this week, we walked through the process of creating our profiles for the GA job board. There is quite a bit of information that we have to prepare for our profiles, so we have a lot of work to do even after we finish UXDi this Friday!

As soon as possible after the program ends, we each need to complete our:

  1. LinkedIn profile
  2. GA profile
  3. Resume
  4. Portfolio

It would have been great if we had some kind of previous notice that we would need to still be completely available for the weeks after the 10 week immersive to complete all of these materials. I had considered taking some sort of trip in November, but I'm glad I decided not to!

 

Field Trips: Macy's and Venmo

On Thursday and Friday, we had tours of offices at Macy's.com and Venmo and learned about their companies and UX departments.

Macy's.com

  • Has ~25 UX Designers, and is rapidly growing!  They currently have 3 UXDi grads on their team, 2 of which connected during the Meet & Hire event.
  • Large company, but has tried to incorporate an Agile framework for some projects.
  • It was pretty cool to see that they were using so many of the design processes that we've been using throughout UXDi, including these personas and customer journey maps:

 

VENMO/BRAINTREE/PAYPAL

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  • More of a startup feel.  There was minimal structure to our tour and Q&A session, which probably reflects the overall work style here.
  • The designers we talked to are fulfilled with the level of ownership they have over their designs.
  • Highly value humility in new hires.

 

Work on Project 5

The vast majority of class time this week was spent on Project 5 work.  My group went through several large redesigns throughout the course of the week, but we finally have some wireframes put together that we are comfortable presenting on Wednesday, after spending most of our Saturday at GA.

We have had a great experience working with our clients, and it has been an interesting challenge balancing user needs, business needs, and development time constraints. More details to come!

 

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General Assembly's UXDi - Week 8

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Topics Covered this Week

  • Engaging with Stakeholders
  • Statements of Work
  • UX Job Interviews
  • Analytics
  • Gamification

 

Resume Feedback

The first drafts of our new resumes were due on Tuesday.  We each were encouraged to sign up for feedback on our resumes from our Career Coach at General Assembly, Andrew Whelan, and he provided us with very helpful recommendations.

 

Guest Lecture: Jonathan Irwin

Jonathan Irwin spoke with us about managing client relationships, and for me, he was one of the most inspiring guest speakers we've had.  He is a managing director at Neo, and had some really valuable advice to share.

  • Have a great attitude all the time.
  • Criteria for projects that you choose to take on should be:
    • It's challenging
    • It's interesting
    • It's meaningful
  • Have a great network.  If a project isn't for you, refer to your network.
  • Focus on business outcomes, not deliverables.  At an initial kickoff meeting with stakeholders, ask "If I were to give you that, does that solve your business problem?"

I also loved the high standards that Neo holds itself to.  Jonathan said that at Neo, it is requirement that clients value its people and process.

 

Project 5

It is very possible that Jonathan Irwin's talk resonated so well with me in part because it was very relevant to what my group is going through for our last project.  We were initially tasked with creating a new feature for our client, but after our initial research believed that the project should be taken in another direction to support business and user needs.

The good news is that we did our research, presented our findings to our client, and our client was very receptive and willing to shift the direction of our project!  The bad news is that this process took a large portion of our time, and we only have 1.5 weeks left to deliver on our design ideas.  Time to get to work!

 

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General Assembly's UXDi - Week 7

This week, we focused on presenting ourselves as UX Designers.  We had time to build out our portfolios by expanding on our last project in a way that is unique to our personal goals as UX Designers.  Towards the end of the week, we began to focus on honing our elevator pitches so that we can sell ourselves in just a small amount of time.  

Topics Covered this Week

  • Service Design
  • Human Interface Guidelines
  • Style Guides
  • Designing for Mobile
  • Project Management Principles
    • Waterfall Framework
    • Agile Framework
    • Lean UX
  • UX Storytelling

 

Guest Lecture: Designers + Developers: Best Friends Forever

 

Janet Taylor is a developer turned designer, and Steph Monette is a designer turned developer, so they had a lot to say about how designers and developers can work together.

Highlights from my notes:

  • Designers and developers are both designers on the same team, they just use different tools.
  • Create a shared language.
    • Designers need to learn the language of the developers to make their feedback more actionable.
    • Developers need to understand the design process and like to be a part of it.
  • Understand the overlap: Good engineering yields good UX.
  • A couple good questions to ask in the interview process:
    • "What are you doing to cultivate a good design culture in your organization?"
    • "Tell me where design sits in the structure of your company."

 

Outcomes: Portfolios

  • Your portfolio is a UX Design Challenge, just like all other UX Design Challenges.  Use the same research, tools, and design process as any other project!
  • Consider all the audiences that may look at your portfolio and the kinds of things that each audience will be looking for.
  • Put your best work first, otherwise it may not be seen.

 

Elevator Pitch

This week, we all practiced pitching ourselves in front of the class, as if we met a UX Hiring Manager at a networking event.

Questions we aimed to address in <2 minutes:

  • What do you do well?
  • How is your focus connected to your background?
  • What would you like to do?
  • What is your why?
  • How this connects to the job you want
  • How it applies to a recent project

 

Project 5 Intro

At the end of the day on Friday, we were all assigned with the groups we will working with on our last project and the real company we will working with!  I will be working with Honeit and I'm excited to meet with them on Monday!

General Assembly's UXDi Week 6

Hello all!  I am feeling very rested coming out of Week 6 at General Assembly, and ready to take on the last 4 weeks of this UXDi!  Week 6 was a an unusual week.  We haven't been working much on Project 4, and instead have been learning some additional skills to round out our knowledge base.  We ended the week with a Jamathon (Design Jam + Hackathon), which was a lot of fun and provided us with a way to start having discussions with developers during the design process.  

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Topics Covered This Week

  • Visual Design
  • Front End Development
  • Job Search Strategies
  • Conflict Management

 

 

Guest lectures

Visual Design with Josh Silverman

Josh Silverman was a very engaging lecturer and kept the whole day interesting while providing us with a lot of content about branding and visual design.

Key Takeaways:

  • Great Brand = Great UX
  • Design must have a purpose.
  • Consistency is essential for both branding and UX

 

Front End Web Development with Gilberto Medrano

We spent 6 hours learning some of the basics of front-end development with Gilberto Medrano. While the lecture was interesting, most of our time was focused on the history and big picture of computing.  I was hoping to dive a lot deeper into HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but I do understand that there was not enough time to accomplish much.  There are plenty of other resources to learn Front End Dev online, so I will just have to follow up with that in another 4 weeks.

Cool Resources:

  • This is a really fun way to learn how to select elements with CSS!
  • I had no idea that you can play around with the code of existing websites!  Right-click anything on a website, and select "Inspect Element".  See what kind of changes you can make (it might end up looking like a disaster, but you can just refresh the page and all is well again).
  • Unfortunately, this site was down during our lecture, but http://codepen.io/  was recommended as a good resource.

 

 

Job Search Strategies: Key Takeaways

  • Reach out to designers who have what you want.  Ask if they would be willing to chat for 30 minutes.  The intention here should be connecting with people, rather than finding a job.
  • Don't just apply to a job through the company's website.  Get in touch with someone in the department, or at least a recruiter.
    • Use Sellhack to find contact email addresses.
    • Explain why you wanted to talk to them.

 

 

Case Study Presentations

Previously, all of our presentations were under the premise that we were selling our designs to stakeholders.  This time, we each presented a case study as if we were in a job interview.  The presentations were completely different from previous presentations of the same designs, so this was a very helpful exercise to prepare us for the job search.

 

 

Jamathon: Best Day of UXDi Yet

We finished off the week with a Jamathon (Design Jam + Hackathon).  We were given a challenge at the beginning of the day, and got into groups of 3-4 students. Previous GA Web Development Immersive students joined us and rotated between groups to provide us with some developer perspective on our ideas.

We had the day to define a problem, research, brainstorm, iterate, and present our designs by 4pm.

My group had so much fun.  It was very exciting to work with new people to create something from nothing in the span of 6 hours.  More Hackathons/Design Jams/Jamathons are in my future!

 

 

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General Assembly's UXDi - Week 5

"No matter how good your interface is, it would be better if there were less of it." -Alan Cooper

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Topics Covered This Week

  • Interface Design Patterns
  • Journey Mapping
  • Usability Testing
  • Analyzing Usability Results
  • Writing Case Studies

 

(New) Skills Practiced This Week

  • Prototyping with Axure
  • Usability Testing

 

Project 3: Retrospective Coming Soon!

On Friday, we presented Project 3, our first group project!  We are going to be continuing work on Project 3 over the next couple of weeks, so I will be including a detailed retrospective once the project is finished.

 

Highlights

  • Presentation #3: Gaining confidence
    • On Friday, we made presentations for the third time, and I saw a huge increase in the confidence of my classmates and the quality of their presentations.
    • Though every presentation is stressful, I learn so much in the process.  I feel myself getting more and more comfortable explaining design decisions and telling a story around each design.
  • Guest Speaker: Nathan Shedroff
    • Nathan spoke with us about the importance of speaking the language of business leaders in order to make change in an organization.
  • Axure
    • I loved learning how to use Axure (though I know that my opinion on this doesn't line up with a lot of my more visually-inclined classmates).  Out of the three tools we have learned so far (Axure, Sketch, and Invision), this one just clicked with me.
    • Takeaway: Try new tools and find what's best for you!
  • How to make your tables less terrible
  • How to create journey maps

 

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General Assembly's UXDi - Week 4

"So, the question was, 'How do you convey meaning while keeping it short?'" -GA Instructor, Ted, summarizing a long-winded question by a fellow student

 

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This week, we started our first group project!  Each group was assigned a real company with a problem that we have hypothetically been asked to solve.  My group is designing a system that motivates LifeLock customers to modify their behavior to adopt best practices in security.

 

Topics Covered This Week

  • Participatory Design
  • Design Critique
  • Surveys & Screeners
  • Interview Techniques
  • Contextual Inquiry
  • Design and Research Synthesis Methods
  • Personas and Scenarios
  • Writing and Composition
  • Feature Prioritization and Minimum Viable Products

 

Skills Practiced This Week

  • Collaboration
  • Affinity Maps
  • Gamestorming
  • Concept Modeling
  • Contextual Inquiry
  • Interviewing
  • Surveying

 

Communication Skills = Crucial!

Working collaboratively on our first group project has required us to thoroughly articulate every design decision we make. Coming to consensus can be difficult and time consuming, but now that we've flushed out every decision, I feel much more confident about the design that is to come and the process is backing it up.

I have seen an improvement in all of our communication skills in just one week.  One major plus for General Assembly's program is this collaboration that the immersive environment allows.

 

Guest Speakers

We had a couple of inspiring speakers this week!  Here are a few of my takeaways:

  • Megan Timney from Inkling
    • Make sure your designs actually solve a problem.
    • Always ask "Why?".
  • Brian OKelley from FutureDraft
    • Make LIVE design changes!  It builds trust and gets everyone on the same page.
    • Involve the client throughout the design process and there will never be a "big reveal".

 

Career Advice This Week

  • Update your LinkedIn profile
    • Your headline is the most important piece of real estate on your profile.  Make sure it is clear!
    • Make sure skills area is clean, and that UX skills are on top
    • Highlight any transferrable skills from your past work experience.
  • Read newsletters from TechCrunch, Venture Beat, and Crunchbase.  Companies that have been recently funded are probably hiring!
  • As always, network.

 

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General Assembly's UXDi - Week 3

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We're made it through Week 3 and Project 2!  I was pretty stressed out in the middle of this week because we were finishing our project and preparing for presentations, but everyone seemed to do well!  I was very impressed with my classmates' presentations and I am looking forward to working with a couple of them on our group project that is coming up next week.

 

Topics Covered This Week

  • Forms
  • Prototyping
  • Invision
  • Content Strategy
  • Usability Evaluation Techniques
  • UX Careers

 

Skills Practiced This Week

  • Wireframing (Sketch)
  • Prototyping (Invision)
  • Usability Walkthroughs
  • Presenting

 

Highlights

  • Invision - is awesome tool to making clickable prototypes.  Once you have some wireframes created, learn how to use it! (Or you can use some of their prepopulated wireframes if you just want to play around with Invision.)
  • Career Panel - During lunch on Wednesday, three recent UXDi grads came to give us career advice. It was good to have the opportunity for Q&A with some students that had success finding jobs after GA.
  • Project 2 Presentations - While they were stress-inducing for most, our presentations were very insightful for everyone.
    • Presentation Practice - Learning how to articulate design decisions and communicate is a critical skill as a UX Designer, so getting this practice was really valuable.
    • Learning from other Presenters - There was so much opportunity to learn what to do, what no to do, and how many different ways there are to present the same kind of information.
    • Instructor Feedback - Each student was provided with really great insights that I will be taking with me throughout my career!

 

Lowlights

  • Stress - The end of the project brought some stress with it.  This is to be expected, and I'm glad that GA pushes us and gives us some practice working on a time-sensitive project.  I'm glad I'm done, but I'm also glad I had to go through this process.

I'm trying to think of some more lowlights to share, but I am really enjoying my time at GA!  I can't believe 3 weeks have already gone by!

 

Project 2

Checking out my Project 2 Retrospective will tell you more about the ins and outs of Project 2 than I am going to share right here, but we basically had to design a prototype for an e-commerce website for a brick and mortar toy store.  Our instructors pretended they were the stakeholders of the company so that we could interview them about their business needs, and they provided us with some personas that we could base their users' needs off of.

Throughout this project, we further exercised skills from Project 1, and continued to add to our toolkit.  We learned how to create wireframes with Sketch and clickable prototypes with Invision. We were introduced to techniques used in Information Architecture and practiced sketching user flows and system maps.

 

 

Best Pieces of Career Advice of the Week:

  • Be ready to describe your skills on a high level (ex: communication, collaboration, problem solving) and on a more granular level (ex: Sketch, Invision, card sorting)
  • Your portfolio is how you'll create your first impression and get your foot in the door.
    • Your contact information should be easy to find.
  • UX Nights with Cascade is a highly recommended Meetup by UXDi grads
  • Find your Unique Selling Proposition: What makes you unique and different and how does this relate to your employer?

 

 

Highlights from my Notes

 

Forms

"Forms suck." -Luke W.  

But they don't have to!   Check out The $300 Million Button article.

 

Prototypes

It's cheaper to build, get feedback, and iterate now than to rebuild later!

The type of prototype you should make will depend on the questions you want to answer, but Invision is a great tool to create a clickable prototype.

 

Content Strategy

Content drives everything!

Content strategists need to consider

  • WHAT topics and formats?
  • WHY does anyone care?
  • HOW are we going to deliver the message?
  • WHERE will we get content? Syndicated content?
  • WHEN will pages be published/updated?
  • WHO is responsible? Who will maintain it over time?

 

Usability Evaluations & Walkthroughs

Use Early & Often.  Powerful for early feedback.

"Our job is to tell people their babies are ugly." -our instructor, Susan

 

 

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General Assembly's UXDi - Week 2

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Topics Covered This Week

  • Business Analysis
  • Information Architecture
  • Navigation & Search
  • Interaction Design
  • Modular Design

 

Skills Practiced this Week

  • Business Research/Interviewing
  • Card Sorting
  • Bodystorming
  • User flows & System Maps
  • Wireframing on Sketch

 

Job Search Strategy Notes

  • If you don't brand yourself, someone else will.
  • Memorize your own unique selling proposition.  Embody it every day.
  • Read Medium articles.
  • Join LinkedIn Groups
  • Blog & Tweet
  • Read Life Launch
  • Find mentors

 

Major Takeaway of the Week

Embrace chaos and navigate through it.

Before this week, I was conceptually aware that there would be chaos, as expressed in this representation of the UX Design process.  I'd read many articles and books all saying the same thing - expect chaos but don't lose confidence in your design process.

This week, I found myself in a whirlwind of thoughts about Project 2 (designing an e-commerce site for a toy company).  There were user needs to think about, product categories to think about, business goals, system maps, user flows, navigation ideas...but nothing was decided, and nothing was fitting together because nothing was determined in any of these areas.  I had to take a step back and understand how to move forward.

Just as I was trying to get a grip on how to proceed with so many different elements floating around in brainstorming-land, our instructor gave us some great advice: At some point, you have to put a stake in the ground.  You have to make some sort of decision, and then be open to feedback and iterations.

I was surprised at how much of a revelation this was for me.  I'd read about the chaos.  I was prepared for the chaos.  But when I was in the middle of the chaos, I wasn't able to identify it as, "Oh, this is that chaos we're supposed to expect." It just felt like I had no idea what was going on.

I learned that not only is it important to expect chaos, it is also necessary to be able identify it. The feeling of chaos is something that is hard to conceptualize without experiencing it first-hand. This is probably why every time I ask for a book recommendation about a particular topic in UX, the response is typically, "You should really just practice doing it."

 

 

Highlights from My Notes

Introduction to Design & Business Analysis

  • "You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four." -Miles Davis
  • Dieter Ram's 10 Principles of "Good Design"
  • Basic Process:
    1. Discover
    2. Define
    3. Develop
    4. Deliver
  • Designers are not the only designers (collaboration is necessary).
  • Simon Sinek's TED Talk - Start with Why
  • Keep asking "Why?" to find the real issue because clients usually have trouble distinguishing symptoms from the real problem.
  • There is not one blueprint for UX design.
  • Successful designs align business goals with user goals.

Information Architecture, Nagivation, & Interaction Design

  • Peter Morville's explanation
  • Payoff of good IA:
    • Builds a shared vocabulary
    • Informs the interface design and navigation
    • Helps with database design
    • Helps plan for scale
    • Makes site more usable
  • Navigation is Information Architecture made tangible.
  • Acid Test: Can the user glean the scope of the entire site from the primary navigation links?
  • Avoid Mystery Meat
  • Interaction Design Usability Heuristics

Wireframing & Modular Design

  • What Makes a Good Wireframe:
    • Information hierarchy
    • Order & Alignment
    • Consistent, clear classes
    • Reasonable scaling
    • Meaningful content (but not final copy)
  • Tips:
    • Don't skip sketching
    • Keep it simple with colors
    • Focus on what you need to communicate
    • Annotate as you go along
  • Always be thinking about how to reuse elements.  Benefits:
    • Readability/understandability
    • Balance between elements
    • Consistency
    • Easier to code
    • Basis of responsive design

 

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General Assembly's User Experience Design Immersive - Week 1

Screen Shot 2015-09-13 at 8.38.28 AM  

 

I have officially made it through Week 1 at General Assembly's User Experience Design Immersive and am excited to provide an update!

 

Topics Covered this Week:

  • Giving & Receiving Feedback
  • User Research - Conducting User Interviews
  • Competitive and Comparative Analysis
  • Sketching User Experiences: Storyboards and User Interfaces
  • Presenting Designs

 

 

Deliverables Produced this Week:

  • Project 1!  Our first project was aimed at getting us into the mindset of a designer in just 3 days. We were asked to interview a fellow classmate to find a need that could be fulfilled with a mobile application, and then design a solution for the user.

 

 

Highlights:

 

Meeting New People

It was great to be in an environment with so many fellow students who share my interests and goals. There are 52 students in my cohort, but we are divided into 2 classes of 26 students.  I felt like I was meeting new people all week, but there are still so many people that I have yet to have a conversation with.

  • My mentor

    GA paired each student with a mentor who graduated from UXDi within the last year or so.  I met with my mentor for lunch on Thursday, and she was a great resource to discuss how to utilize time at UXDi, as well as prepare for a career search post-UXDi.

  • My buddy

    GA also paired us with a buddy from the other class.  This was a great way to create a connection with someone I may not have found the opportunity to chat with otherwise.

  • Pre-class time

    Due to some commuting restrictions, I get to class about 45 minutes early every day, which provides me with time to connect with other early arrivers.

  • Feedback opportunities

    For Project 1, our teachers set up a feedback session in which we gave and received feedback on our sketches from 5 students in the other class.  This was a great opportunity for feedback and meeting new people!

  • Happy Hour

    Every Friday, there is a happy hour at GA! Students, teachers, and other staff all attend!

 

Immediate Application of Lecture Material

On Wednesday morning, we were presented with an outline of Project 1.  Throughout the rest of the week, we would have lectures that were followed up with immediate application of what we learned.  This was a great way to reinforce what we learned, find our own takeaway lessons, and create material for our portfolios.  For example:

  • Lecture on User Research --> Go Interview your User!
  • Lecture on Sketching --> Now try it!

 

Great Instructors

I really enjoy learning from my instructors, Susan Wolfe and Ted Everson. They are both friendly, engaging, care about our progress, and are always there to ask for guidance.

 

Organization

The system at GA is very well organized, and I always know where to find the resource I am looking for. Google Drive stores all of our lecture slides and project submissions, and we can connect with fellow UXDi students through our Facebook group.

 

 

Lowlights:

Technical difficulties

Our instructors have been having some trouble with the projector/sound system. Not a big deal, but it has taken up a bit of class time.

 

Potential Career Finding Trouble?

My lunch conversation with my mentor mostly revolved around post-UXDi career searching.

My mentor's experience

She was actually hired for contract work by the startup company that she worked with on Project 5!  After finishing that project, she found a job that she loves at a company in San Francisco.

My mentor's warning

She believes that she was in the minority.  Many of her classmates are still looking for a full-time job. She did not feel that GA did a good job of continuing to help her classmates with their job search once they left the program.

GA's follow-up on this issue

I think that General Assembly is very aware that this is something that many students have been complaining about.  On Thursday, we had an introduction to their Outcomes program, and they have introduced some new resources and strategies in this iteration of their program.  We will be required to meet a list of requirements throughout the course and post-graduation that will aid in our job search. (More follow-up on this as I see how it unfolds.)

 

Favorite Maxims of the Week

As a class, each morning we put together some maxims that we learned the previous day.  Here are a few of my favorites from this week:

  • Design is messy.
  • Go out there and try things, don't just theorize.
  • You are not your user.  Don't assume you know your user's problems.
  • Sketches are quick & cheap.
  • Sketches are a communication tool.

 

 

Highlights from my Notes

 

Conducting User Research:

  • "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they'd have said faster horses." -Henry Ford
  • You are not your user, even if you match the target audience. You know too much.
  • User Research helps to align the team, save money, and should happen throughout the entire design process.
  • We need to know who our users are, what their habits are, where they're accessing form, when they are doing it, and how they are accessing it.
  • User research methods: user interviews, contextual inquiry, surveys, card sorting, diary studies, data analysis, eye tracking, A/B and multivariate testing

Seeking (the right) Inspiration:

  • Use competitive/comparative analysis, heuristics analysis, LEMErS (Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Error Management, Satisfaction)

Sketching User Experience:

  • Sketching rapidly translates ideas into something tangible.
  • Sketching helps explore, refine, communicate visually, simplify the complex, and validate.
  • Describing a user experience should be like telling a story.

Presenting Your Design:

  • Know your audience.
  • Speak simply.
  • Tell a story.
  • Make next steps clear.

 

 

 

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Steal Like an Artist

Steal Like an Artist"Write a blog post about someone you admire and link to their site."

-Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist

Link to Austin Kleon's website

 

This week, I read Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, as part of the prework that General Assembly assigned for their User Experience Design Immersive.  This is a fantastic book that you can (and probably will) finish without ever putting it down.  It's not specifically UX-related, but it has some inspiring insights, many of which I will be implementing in my life and in this blog.

Some snippets of advice that I will be stealing (like an artist):

  • "Study everything there is to know about one thinker you really love.  Then find 3 people that thinker loved, and find out everything about them." I'm starting with you, Austin.
  • "Carry a notebook and a pen with you wherever you go. Get used to pulling it out and jotting down your thoughts and observations." "Keep a logbook [to list the things you do every day]" I have taken the liberty of combining these into one handy all-purpose notebook.
  • "The Internet can be more than just a resting place to publish your finished ideas--it can also be an incubator for developing work that you haven't started yet." I loved reading this advice just after starting this blog. Even though this is only my second post, I've already found sharing my thoughts to be a great way to understand where I am in this process and develop ideas that have been floating around in my head.

Some particularly awesome quotes found in this book:

  • "The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life." -Jessica Hische
  • "Don't throw any of yourself away.  Don't worry about a grand scheme or unified vision for your work.  Don't worry about unity--what unifies your work is the fact that you made it.  One day, you'll look back and it will all make sense." -Austin Kleon
  • "It's one of my theories that when people give you advice, they're really just talking to themselves in the past." -Austin Kleon

This is going to be my go-to holiday gift this year.  I feel like people from all sorts of backgrounds can get something significant out of Steal Like an Artist, so I'm going to do my best to share it.

 

A couple more highlights from this week:

First, thank you to those of you who have subscribed to get weekly updates!  Only 18 more days until I start at General Assembly, and then these posts will become UXDi-focused.

  • Dash, General Assembly's online HTML, CSS, and Javascript class.  Dash has been a fun and interactive way to get an introduction to building websites, and the course gives you the freedom to experiment and create your own projects. I would recommend it to anyone entering UX, whether or not you plan on attending GA. It is available to the public for free, so you might as well try it!  More on Dash

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The Beginning of My UXploration

My background

My name is Rachel, and I am embarking on a journey to find a place for myself in the field of User Experience Design.  I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2014 with a B.A. in Cognitive Science, but I was unsure how I wanted to apply my interests to a career.  I flipped around through more ideas than I can remember off the top of my head, including starting a business, event planning, cognitive research, environmental work, and nutrition. Though many of these ideas excited me, none of them felt exactly right.

A couple months ago, I finally realized that "UX" was popping up all over my searches for "cognitive science".  I decided to figure out what this "UX" stood for, and to sum things up, I think I found what I've been looking for.  As a future UX Designer, I am thrilled at the prospect of combining technology, creativity, teamwork, and continuous learning.

Current plan

I have been building up my UX knowledge in a few different ways.  I will get into some of these in more detail soon, but here is a summary:

Online courses

  • Thinkful - User Experience Design - I've had a great experience working with my mentor.  She has extensive experience and has provided me with a customized course based on my background and goals.
  • Treehouse - UX Basics - This is a quick intro to UX.  Good if you are interested in UX, but don't really understand what it is.

Books

These are all very interesting and enjoyable!  5-star Goodreads ratings for every one!

  • The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
  • Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
  • The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett
  • Undercover User Experience by Cennydd Bowles and James Box

Blogs

There are a lot of great UX blogs out there.  I'm still sorting out which I should focus on.  Here are some highlights for me during these initial stages.

Podcasts

I am a huge podcast fan.  It's a great way to learn while driving, walking, cleaning, eating breakfast...

  • The UX Intern - Highly recommended for anyone just starting out.
  • UX Podcast
  • The Web Ahead
  • The Big Web Show
  • Dorm Room Tycoon

Connecting

  • Events at General Assembly
  • Reaching out to contacts I already have
  • Twitter

Coming soon

I will be documenting my journey into the field of UX Design in this blog.  I hope to connect with fellow UXplorers, and I would love feedback from anyone in the User Experience community.

I am excited to announce that I will be attending UXDi at General Assembly.  The 10-week session begins on Tuesday, September 8, 2015.  Blog posts during this time will be primarily related to General Assembly's immersive program!

 

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