HELLO
My name is Baba Oana and I am an enthusiastic and determined Junior UX Designer aspiring to join the community.
The process
Individual and teamwork research
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Individually: I have studied different types of platforms and familiarized myself with the community that my project was aimed towards.
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Teamwork: My team and I has created survey and interview questions which were later used to generate useful information from existing members of the UX community from all around the globe.
The individual research is a permanent process of studying and informing myself about new environments, tools and possible client base.
For this specific project the starting point of my research was studying the clients for which my app design was supposed to be based on.
Integrating myself in the community through surveys, interviews, reading online posts and exploring their honest, anonymous opinions gave me a bonus insight into their perspective.
Individual Research
Team JUPITER
The team was formed of six members and the work was divided equally, allowing everyone to dwell a little bit in each of the steps that formed a complete research cycle.
Most of the work was done online, on Miro using sticky notes to organize the useful information extracted as a result of the survey and interview questions.
Team Research
Difficulties appeared at the beginning of the project regarding the theme that was given to the team and the cooperation between the members. It took a lot of time and patience for the team members to get to know each other in order to gain and offer trust. After this obstacle has been defeated the meetings progressed a lot smoother.
Creating the survey questions
The survey questions were assembled by every member of the team. We aimed to extract useful information from the answers by creating both qualitative and quantitative questions. The theme on which the questions were formed was: Designing solutions to help designers at the beginning of their careers (less than 2 years on the job) who want to accelerate their skillset and professional development’. While we wanted to give the interviewed person the freedom to speak openly we tried to restrict the possibility of an answer going in the wrong direction.
Survey Clarity
The survey results have offered the team a completely new, honest and raw perspective into the professional life of a Junior UX Designer.
We were able to identify certain recurring issues that more people in the survey mentioned which was the long time for the interviews, the lack of freedom regarding a project or the lengthy process of finding a position in this domain.
Encountered Issues
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Understanding the theme was quite difficult at the beginning because nobody had a deeper understanding about the UX domain. As Junior UX Designers at the very beginning of their career we had the assignment of understanding and solving the problems through which other Junior UX Designers go through.
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My team and I found previous research based on the same theme very useful, so we discussed it and shared it through the team's common Miro board. Therefore we have managed to form a broad understanding of the domain with the help of the course (Scoala Informala de IT) , its mentors and other web social sources.
How were the problems clarified?
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A lot of communication, shared experience, knowledge and ideas between team members and course professors.
Results
Personas
After thorough research through surveys and interviews on the targeted community three main personas have been identified.
Empathy maps
Every interview was analyzed in-depth by every team member and important elements such as pain points, recurring issues and complains were documented in separate distinct sticky notes.
The sticky notes were later used to create affinity maps, empathy maps and personas which defined certain types of personalities more clearly and deailed.
Annabelle Boyle
"I put a lot of time and effort into proffessional self-development until I reached the goal that I was initially aiming for"
Tristian Durham
"Professional development comes from challenging projects."
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Aims to be on top. The best of the best. Highly motivated by career advancement and the higher salary ceiling.
Moriah Mccoy
"I have found myself being held back my anxiety during the job interviews and throughout certain moments of my career."
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Afraid of the unknown. Uncertainty.
Problems and solutions
With the help of the interviews and the surveys we were able to identify the next few problems:
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Mentors were very useful
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Interview process is very lengthy and packed with anxiety
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Hard to show ones potential working in a company on specific projects
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Salary expectations were lower than expected
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Working in the domain was easier than expected
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Hard to find recognition
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Difficulty keeping up with the workload
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Difficulty communicating with international clients
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Constant pressure to improve skills
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Difficult to remain motivated
As a result of the received information and problems identified the team started a brain-storming session in which more possible solutions were identified, discussed and organized in sticky notes.
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Create an app that provides mentors
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Create an app that relaxes the stressed client
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An app that will create recognition for the client
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Organizing tool
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Language/translator tool/app
Wireframing
Wire-frames have been sketched on a notebook after the process of brain-storming and eliminating unpractical or unrealistic ideas. Simplicity and friendliness were the most important objectives during this process.
Creating multiple distinct designs for every specific screen I wanted to include in my app helped me decide through comparison and feedback from an outside perspective.
Before starting the wireframing process I have researched the basic needs for a good app and noted down the most important ideas that I have found.
How has this helped me?
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It has helped me organize my thoughts (after brainstorming)
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It helped me materialize and clarify my ideas
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Practiced Figma
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Research about Figma tools, extensions and possibilities
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Create a visual representation of my initial ideas
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Helped eliminate unnecessary ideas or elements from the app
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Sketch multiple designs as options that would rather be eliminated and improved.
Solution
My decision of creating a productive and relaxing environment for UX/UI Designers through a self-constructed app called UX HUB.
The purpose of the app is helping UI/UX Designers find recognition and receive feedback by posting their project in an environment with experienced people.
It also challenges the user to a daily themed project to design that can be later posted and exposed to ratings and feedback from different users.
Prototype
UX HUB
First difficulties
Familiarizing myself with Figma and exploring its tools proved to be both exciting and frustrating.
Trying to recreate the drawn sketches in Figma required a lot more research, practice and patience than I had initially imagined.
Clarity came from self-study, perseverance and trial and error. Every mistake or feature that was not working as intended was studied and understood based on the accurate system that it was working on.
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UX HUB
A relaxing and friendly design that offers the user a safe and peaceful space.
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An app designed for Junior UX Designers in order to help them grow in a friendly and familiar environment.
User-testing
Having the app that I have been working on for months exposed to testing and honest criticism for users was definitely one of the most nerve-wrecking process of this project.
However, without criticism and feedback I would not be able to improve and grow from my mistakes.
Goals:
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simplicity
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user-friendly
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relaxing
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comfortable to navigate (on a mobile)
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reach its goal of actually helping UX/UI Juniors
Feedback received
My app initially did not have the bottom UI for every page of the app.
Moreover, the position of the UI elements changed, depending on what page the user was on.
The Learn more text is barely visible because of the color of the font and the background overpowering it.
Should make clickable UI more obvious.
Let the user know that certain buttons are indeed clickable.
Avoid repeating yourself on the Log in page:
Log in text appears twice: once on the title text above the account info section, on the clickable log in button, at the bottom.
Keep the same UI elements on every page.
Do not change their position
This will confuse the user and create usability discomfort.
I have tried changing the color and the position of the text to make it more visible-> change the background color for a even better contrast in the future.
Tried to make clickable UI more friendly for the user by adding borders and text around the specific buttons.
Replaced the text that was repeating itself with a similar message.
Things I wish I would have done differently
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Start the testing process a lot earlier into the project.
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Do 2-3 rounds of testing after each fix
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Change it and adjust it as many times as possible. (have it tested after each change)