Ashley_Yoon - UX & UI Pathway

Week: starting week of internship (week of July 12) ~ week of Aug 2

Overview of Things Learned:

Technical Area:

  • learned user-research methods, conducted interviews
  • learned how to interpret interview data & see trends/patterns
  • learned how to create empathy maps, personas, and affinity diagrams
  • learned how to use Mural

Tools: Mural (for maps/diagrams/work), Slack (for communication with the team & leads), STEM-Away (for announcements), Zoom (for interviews, separate group meetings)

Soft Skills: Communication, teamwork, leadership, adaptability

Achievement Highlights: 1) conducted 3 user interviews & compiled main points into transcripts, 2) created first empathy map/personas/affinity diagram, 3) learned how to get insights from the interviews & define or narrow down the problem

Meetings attended: 07/22, 07/23, 07/24, 07/30, 07/31, 08/04

Goals for the Upcoming Week:

  • create 2 sets of low-fidelity prototypes of our solution, figure out pros/cons of each prototype & come up with a single design
  • access Balsamiq/Figma and determine which tool to use

Tasks Done:

  • interviewed users – at first, I wasn’t really sure which topic to focus on and how I should lead the interview in an unbiased way. However, with each interview, I got better at coming up with appropriate (follow-up) questions and got confident in how I conducted the interviews.
  • created empathy map, personas, affinity diagram – I’ve never created an empathy map/personas/affinity diagram before, so it was a bit challenging to figure out what made a good map/diagram and what didn’t. The feedback from the leads and work from my team definitely made the process easier and helped me think outside of the box more.
  • came up with HMW statement and solutions – it was hard narrowing down the problem/statement at first, but with help from the leads and my team members, we were able to come up with a statement and the appropriate solutions.
  • created a rough sketch of our solutions – one of the hurdles was being able to come up with a sketch with components that were 1) aesthetically pleasing and 2) user-friendly. My group and I communicated our ideas a lot and were able to create a rough sketch in the end.

Week: Aug 5 ~ Aug 11

Overview of Things Learned:

Technical Area:

  • learned how to use Figma

  • learned how to build a low-fidelity prototype

  • learned how to create an interactive prototype on Figma

Tools: Slack (for communication with the team & leads), Zoom (for separate group meetings), Figma (for creation of low-fidelity prototype(s))

Soft Skills: Communication, teamwork, leadership, creativity, problem-solving

Achievement Highlights: 1) created 2 low-fidelity prototypes on Figma, 2) narrowed down & incorporated features of each of the 2 prototypes into one final low-fidelity prototype, 3) learned how to navigate around Figma and create an interactive prototype

Meetings attended: 08/06, 08/07, 08/11 (I also attended all the individual group meetings)

Goals for the Upcoming Week:

  • make/update LinkedIn accounts
  • learn & start working on a high-fidelity prototype
  • incorporate feedback from Debaleena & Benjamin when making our high-fidelity prototype and iterate more on our HMW statement

Tasks Done:

  • created 2 prototypes – the second prototype was a lot harder to come up with than the first. I wasn’t really sure how to come up with a brand new idea that had features that were both user-friendly and simple while being completely different from our first prototype. However, my group members and I held meetings to discuss our ideas, and we were able to create our 2 prototypes in the end.
  • narrowed our 2 prototypes down to a final low-fidelity prototype – because we created 2 vastly different prototypes, we weren’t sure which features we should incorporate to make our final prototype better than the 2 already existing designs. The feedback from the leads definitely helped give me insights into what parts should be added, changed, or removed to build our final prototype.
  • presented our final low-fidelity prototype to Debaleena & Benjamin – it was a bit challenging and confusing when we were in the process of creating the presentation slides. I wasn’t really sure which features, problems, and solutions to focus on, nor was I sure which questions I should prepare myself for. However, with help and feedback from the leads, I was able to get a gist of the things we should include in our slides and familiarized myself more with our prototype, ideas, and reasons with my group members.

Week: Aug 12 ~ Aug 18

Overview of Things Learned:

Technical Area:

  • learned what a high-fidelity prototype is
  • learned what a mood board is
  • learned how to build a high-fidelity prototype
  • learned how to make and present an effective presentation

Tools: Slack (for communication with the team & leads), Zoom (for separate group meetings), Google Meet (for team meetings), Figma (for creation of prototypes)

Soft Skills: Communication, teamwork, leadership, creativity, problem-solving, adaptability, organization/planning

Achievement Highlights: 1) created a high-fidelity prototype on Figma, 2) incorporated feedback from the leads, Debaleena, and Benjamin into our final hi-fi prototype & slides, and 3) iterated & finalized our HMW statement.

Meetings attended: 08/13, 08/15 (I also attended all the individual group meetings)

Goals for the Upcoming Week:

  • update my LinkedIn profile and connect with leads and other STEM-Away users
  • present our final high-fidelity prototype

Tasks Done:

  • created our high-fidelity prototype – the feedback was pretty straightforward and creating the high-fidelity prototype itself wasn’t very hard. Instead, the challenge lay in choosing the colors for our prototype and organizing our buttons and designs. I tried looking up design ideas and colors online and eventually decided that the homepage would look better with the continuation of STEM-Away’s current colors. In terms of organization of our buttons, I sketched various potential layouts and reorganized them a lot before settling on the current layout in our hi-fi prototype.
  • edited our presentation slides – the feedback was also pretty straightforward for this one, but there were some comments and new problems that arose that we weren’t sure how to tackle. My group and I met often throughout the week to figure out how to create a clean, efficient presentation.
  • iterated & finalized our HMW statement – this task was a bit challenging as I wasn’t sure how to make our HMW statement better and wasn’t able to think broadly when constructing/editing the statement. However, Rachit gave me good feedback and helped finalize our HMW statement.