Week 2
Another great week of learning UX Design this week. We continued to learn about research and then moved onto Ideation Workshops, Personas, MVP, User Flows and Prototyping.
Exercises
Research
To continue on from our IKEA self checkout project. Miss A and I planned surveys and interview questions. We used google forms for the survey questions and received 7 responses which gave us some good data to present. We then conducted 2 one on one interviews and got some more great data. Then we did analysis and prepared for presentation. Miss A is an amazing presenter, me not so much. But my analysis was pretty good and answering of the questions posed by the audience were pretty good. I’m happy to see the back of IKEA for a while though.
Ideation Workshopping
Rob showed us how to run a ideation workshop with stakeholders. We pretended to be the stakeholders.
- Throw ideas out there for the problems you want to work on. Then vote for the ones to focus on.
- Group the ideas into common sub problem areas
- Complete 6 down to 1 up drawings
- Vote again.
- Repeat if required. If not then progress on.
Personas
In this exercise we created proto personas based on ourselves. I wasn’t there when we learnt about them so learnt it from the slides and completed the persona in my notebook. We had to present them to the group. For a change I did a reasonable presentation.
MVP
Minimal Valuable (viable) Project – This is another workshop usually run by the project manager to run through where features and design elements fall on the following graph and depending on where they fall shows which phase of the project.
We documented the features in the news.com.au website and then choose a persona and carried out a MVP using them as a guide. I worked with Mr D and the persona we choose was Miss P’s.
User flows
Using the persona, we came up with possible user flows.
Prototyping
Then we prototyped using Pop App a version of the solution using just the features identified in the top right quadrant of the MVP to meet the user flows. Testing the user flows with Miss P.
Special guests and field visits
Alex from Atlassian
This week we were lucky enough to be inspired by Alex. He came in and showed us sketching techniques and how to do simple sketchnoting. Here is an example that I created which happens to be my persona.
Objective Experience
We went on a field trip to Objective Experience. They gave us an overview of what they do and showed us some really cool tech. Eye tracking in testing is a big proportion of what they do. We also discussed the differences between Asia, Europe, America and Australia and their UX and testing maturity. There was also a discussion around the differences between working in an agency and in a corporate team.
Reflection
I loving the course I’m finding the balance between theory and practice is really working for me. I’m learning a lot and having fun. Only problem is me. I had a bad week last week, I opened my box of worms and they all flowed out. It’s coming up to death anniversaries for Mum (1 yr), Dad (10 yrs) and Grammy (13 yrs). It really hit me this week. I have got really tired from the travel so my boobs hurt and the social side of being with people all the time is draining so I feel like I’m just hanging on. I’m currently trying to think of ways to cope with the fatigue.
I’m also in the process of planning my personal project. I have been inspired by a couple of video talks that I have seen, one by Siemens hosted by IEEE and the other by DELTA, energy and environment on the energati website. But more likely I am to concentrate on smaller more local issues, like the headgear app and Muscle Republic.
