Summary of Weeks 5 to 10 of UX design at Academy Xi

Weeks 5 to 10 of the course were project weeks. Each project used a different project management structure, Waterfall, Agile and Lean.

  1. Week 5 – Living Building Challenge with Miss A
  2. Weeks 6 & 7 – Sydney Opera House with Miss C
  3. Week 8 – Beam Wallet with Miss A and Miss L
  4. Weeks 9 & 10 – Muscle Republic by myself

It was great to see the effect that we could have after such a short period of time. I was great to see UX design in action.

Living Building Challenge – Waterfall

Miss A and I choose to work on the Living Building Challenge project. This project was an extension of the work completed by Tobias from the course before ours. We received his personas, early prototype, story cards and interview guide for his original interviews. Our task was to take it improve on his prototype and test his story cards with interviews of people from the industry. We delivered confirmation of the story cards, a new prototype and a priority list for the next stages of development. For full details of this project go to my portfolio

Sydney Opera House – Agile

Miss C and I were lucky enough to pull our names out of the hat and found ourselves working on the Sydney Opera House Project. This project was to look at ways to improve their current ticketing experience on both phone, tablet and computer. We received copies of their videos of customers using the website on computer and mobile. Also we received their ‘transaction path funnel’ for computer and mobile. We delivered a improved prototype for the website, heuristic reviews and additional value add pages. For full details of this project go to my portfolio

Beam Wallet – Lean

Miss A, Miss L and I were assigned Beam Wallet for the Lean week. The problem that we were attempting to solve was the acceptance of beam wallet by staff and owners in new stores who had signed up. Also how to roll out training to the staff. We split up and each focussed on different solutions. I focussed on producing a staff rewards system to encourage staff to use beam wallet themselves and encourage them to be champions in the community. I delivered rough prototypes and user flow for the staff rewards system.

Muscle Republic – Personal Project

By far my favourite of all the projects. I worked with Vic and Jess at Muscle Republic who were looking at ways to understand their customers better for marketing, stock levels and product design. I produced personas, SWOT analysis, customer insights and a product journey. For full details of this project go to my portfolio

Visitors

Joe Purves from DMG

Joe did a half day workshop with us on Photoshop. It was quite good we covered

  • Layer masks
  • Linked Objects
  • Page setup – 12 column grid
  • Golden Ration
  • Contrast Check
  • WCAG2.0

Vera Kravchuk

Vera did a portfolio workshop. She is very inspirational. She gave direction and structure to preparing a portfolio. Also great tips for linkedin and interviews. I really enjoyed the day and am using some of her suggestions while preparing my portfolio.

Insights and Reflections

By far the best weeks of the course. It was great to be creating and researching and seeing the impact of our designs and deliverables. Personally it was a very tough few weeks with Mum’s 1st anniversary and Dad’s 10th falling with in 9 days of each other. I was thankful that I was working on projects to keep me occupied and engaged and with people that I got along with very well.

So what next?

The course is now finished so what is next for me. I’m going to work for myself. I’m looking at very short term contracts and freelance work in the UX research space. I really enjoyed the work I did for Muscle Republic so would love continue to do small local projects like that. So if you think I can help you understand your customers and give direction to where you should head next don’t hesitate to contact me

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