UXD General Assembly Week 1

 

Pre-class

GA depends on Slack as a forum for students to interact and Schoology as a portal to upload all the slides and documents to study. Wireframe tool, GA gives out license (doubt it is a lifetime) for a tool called Axure instead of Sketch (Haven’t put my hands on that tool yet, will update as soon as possible)

Introduction of UX

The instructor(will use Katia from now on) ask the class on “What do you think UX is?” and write them on a sticky note. Some said it is a process, it is an improvement..etc UX design needs the foundation of Design Thinking and throughout this course, the class will be using Design Thinking by jumping right in to experience it ourselves.

Asking the right questions to grope out a better answers from interviewees. Do not simply take interviewee answer but ask more detailed about it.

• Ask open-ended questions (Do not ask yes/no questions)
• Ask “Why?” or “So what’s your conclusion on this?” to let interviewees to sum up and organise their thoughts back
• Do not push for specific information as you might missed other important discoveries.
• Use silence as a way to get interviewees to continue their stories. (I like this 🙂 People tends to fill more on awkward silences.

Note: Katia briefed me after the 2nd class finished on what’s the class had done on the 1st class because I missed the first class due to my flight misconnection

 

Prototypes and Critiques

I missed the first class due to my flight misconnection and I absolutely had no idea what’s going on when the instructor said “You now has 10 mins. 1, 2, 3.. Go! Write down the ideas” (What?). Even though I had scanned through the previous class slides, I still felt uncertain on where I shall start.  The instructor Katia was nice enough to hint me what’s going on last week and encouraged me to try going with the flow. Will need some time to adjust to the time constraint style of teaching in GA.

Previous class: The class was set to interview each other on what’s their gift-giving experience. Based on people’s interviews, you will need to design a system(solution) based on your needs and goals on that topic.

Some of the classmates mentioned that some users placed a heavy importance on gift-packaging thus, they provide a gift wrapping services. Some group’s gift-giving goals are to give appreciation to colleagues thus you can opt for giving cards and notes. Some emphasise on surprises/memory so they provide consultancy on events when giving out their gifts. For me, I were targeting on clueless people who does not know what to give out at all so I provide list of recommendations based on the receiver’s preferences.

Next we were given 20 mins to expand our concept and sketch the ideas and steps in a paper for user to use it. We had to define our story and enhance it. Most of us design the system in digital way until… Katia pull out an immediate change request.

Uh oh! Looks like majority of your users are elderly that are not tech-savvy!

We had to adapt rapidly on the changing requirement so some of the system has to be changed. After that we had to pitch our concepts for only 10 mins for each group and classmates were encouraged to provide feedback or criticism. Katia encouraged us to put more empathy into system design to cater needs.

By listening to classmates, there are some interesting concepts.

• The system provides service to help user to buy multiple presents for festive seasons (etc: Christmas season) in a more convenience approach.
• The system will later enquire feedback from the user to further improvements.
• Tinder-like app for user to browse for gifts
• Paper-like catalog or phone services are provided for elderly to access the system.
• Elderly people can opt for a trial gifts(etc: cosmetic) before making any decision to buy certain products.

— My sketches when I roughly wrote down what’s the few ideas came out interestingly during the classes–

What I have learned/noticed from class

1. I still need some time to adjust to think within the time limitations. Each team can only present in a 10 mins and alarm rang off during feedback session before any explanation is given.
2. The solution that given is useless if we did not include empathy for the user because it will not cater their needs and they end up getting frustrated and leave your system.
3. Limitation(or requirement) is good. It keeps you from off-track too much.
4. Writing down, talking to partners and drawing down ideas keep the creativity flowing and organise your thoughts and focus on important points.
5. It’s good to get a lot of wide perspectives in a group but due to that the class conducts in a little rush manner to make sure the class completes within 2 hours.