Cwh - UX & UI (Level 2) Pathway

A concise overview of things learned:

Technical Area:

  • Introduction to UX Research
  • Introduction to Bioinformatics
  • Figma (create presentation)
  • Preparing an Interview Guide
  • Miro (stakeholder map, personas)

Tools:

  • STEM-Away forum
  • Figma
  • Miro
  • Google Suite
  • Slack

Soft Skills:

  • Research
  • Teamwork and collaboration.
  • Networking
  • Time management
  • Planning

Three achievement highlights:

  • Meeting and collaborating with my team to contact and interview Bioinformatics track members, organizing our responsibilities, and executing our plans.
  • Presenting our research on Bioinformatics.
  • Learning more about the user research aspect of UX design and analyzing the information gathered from the interviews.

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Creating personas as a guide for our prototypes.
  • Interpreting and analyzing the research data more efficiently.
  • Getting more comfortable with tools such as Miro and Figma.

A detailed statement of tasks done:

  • Dealing with the 15-hour time zone difference while working with everyone’s schedules was difficult, especially in week 2, due to external factors interfering with my availability more than usual, thus dividing up the work among the team has been crucial. It also took me a while to familiarize myself with the platforms that were new to me such as Miro and Figma.

Week 3

A concise overview of things learned:

Technical Area:

  • Creating user persona with Miro.
  • Making journey map with Figma.
  • Using Figma Templates.

Tools:

  • STEM-Away forum
  • Discord
  • Figma
  • Miro
  • Trello
  • Slack

Soft Skills

  • Teamwork and collaboration.
  • Time management
  • Project Management

Three Achievement Highlights

  • Completed assignment with my team.
  • Organized data collected from research and interviews to create personas and journey maps while getting more familiar with Miro and Figma.
  • Managed to work around the team’s different time zones.

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Meet with my team to discuss deliverables for the upcoming week.
  • Learn about storyboarding.
  • Learn how to create UX flowcharts.

Tasks Completed:

  • Created a user persona after research.
  • Created a journey map after research.

Hurdles:

  • Dealing with time zone differences for meeting up with team members.
  • Figuring out the best ways to display our data into personas.

Week 4

A concise overview of things learned:

Technical Area:

  • Creating UI/UX Flowcharts (Miro)
  • Creating UI/UX Storyboards (Miro)
  • Visualizing with Flowcharts and Storyboards

Tools:

  • STEM-Away forum
  • Discord
  • Figma
  • Miro
  • Trello

Soft Skills

  • Creativity
  • Teamwork and collaboration
  • Time management

Three Achievement Highlights

  1. Further empathized with specific users by creating storyboards and UX flowcharts.
  2. Used to create personas and journey maps to create storyboards and UX flowcharts.
  3. Learned and gained insight from feedback on our work to improve it even more.

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Learn about prototyping.
  • Learn how to build UX wireframes.
  • Focus more on research findings and design principles.

Tasks Completed:

  • Created storyboards to visualize how our target users will interact with our designs.
  • Created UX flowcharts to visualize every possible step a user takes.

Hurdles:

  • Dealing with time zone differences whilst managing my time to study for midterms and collaborate with my team.
  • Getting familiar with creating storyboards and UX flowcharts.
  • Figuring out the best ways to incorporate information gathered into the storyboards and UX flowcharts.

Week 5

A concise overview of things learned:

Technical Area:

  • Building wireframes.
  • Creating wireflows.
  • Learning how to navigate Excalidraw.
  • Implementing Heuristics, Design Principles, and Gestalt Principles in UI design.

Tools:

  • STEM-Away forum
  • Discord
  • Figma
  • Excalidraw
  • Trello

Soft Skills

  • Creativity
  • Teamwork and collaboration
  • Planning

Three Achievement Highlights

  1. Learned to build the wireframes of the design proposal guided by research findings and design principles.
  2. Learned to created the wireflows to convey interactions.
  3. Complete the task with a teammate and learned how to navigate Excalidraw.

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Learn about User Testing Methods, Prototyping & Transitions in Figma.
  • Add interactions for the Figma prototypes.
  • Conduct user-testing with participants and document findings.
  • Refine the current wireframes based on feedback.

Tasks Completed:

  • Created wireframes and wireflow.
  • Refined last week’s flowchart.
  • Paired up and collaborated with a teammate on the task assigned to us and learned to implement design principles.

Hurdles:

  • Dealing with time zone differences whilst managing my time to work on school projects and collaborate with my team to complete the task.
  • Getting comfortable and working quicker with Excalidraw with just a trackpad to avoid taking too much of my teammate’s time.
  • Figuring out how the wireframe should be made where we eventually referred back to the ideas and thoughts of the people in the Bioinformatics pathway as a guide.

Week 6

A concise overview of things learned:

Technical Area:

  • User Testing Methods
  • Prototyping & Transitions in Figma

Tools:

  • STEM-Away forum
  • Discord
  • Figma
  • Trello

Soft Skills

  • Time management
  • Research
  • Planning

Three Achievement Highlights

  1. Refine the initial wireframes based on usability testing.

  2. Learned and realized the importance of prototyping.

  3. Conducted user-testing with participants and document findings.

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Learn how to implement Low Fidelity vs High Fidelity Prototypes and their importance.
  • Refine the interactive prototypes into high-fidelity interactive mockups.
  • Learn about Design Principles 2.0 and document user-testing feedback to improve our designs.

Tasks Completed:

  • Implemented concepts learned from User Testing Methods, Prototyping & Transitions in Figma.
  • Added interactions for the prototypes.
  • Conducted user-testing with the Bioinformatics community and document findings.

Hurdles:

  • Had to deal with time zone differences whilst managing my time to juggle college assignments, final exams, and StemAway despite being sick for the past 4 days.
  • Figuring out the best ways to implement UI design concepts learned in the prototype.

Week 7

A concise overview of things learned:

Technical Area:

  • Refining the Interactive Prototypes
  • Hi-Fidelity & Low-Fidelity Prototyping
  • Usability Testing Methods

Tools:

  • STEM-Away forum
  • Discord
  • Figma
  • Trello

Soft Skills

  • Teamwork
  • Brain Storming
  • Communication

Three Achievement Highlights

  • Leveraged tested design methods and principles to help improve the designs.
  • Learned about prototyping in both low and high-fidelity formats and when to use each type of prototyping.
  • Refine the high-fidelity interactive prototype and implemented new colors and fonts.

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Finalize high-fidelity interactive prototype
  • Refine and polish project and presentation
  • Prepare to present a professional presentation

Tasks Completed:

  • Refined the interactive prototypes into high-fidelity interactive mockups
  • Documented user-testing feedback
  • Implemented interactivity for the wireframes

Hurdles:

  • Getting a grasp on converting the prototype from low fidelity to high fidelity.
  • Defining the aesthetics of UI for the prototype.

Week 8

A concise overview of things learned:

Technical Area:

  • Finalizing high-fidelity interactive prototype.
  • Polishing project and final presentation.

Tools:

  • STEM-Away forum
  • Discord
  • Figma
  • Trello

Soft Skills

  • Teamwork
  • Time Management
  • Communication

Three Achievement Highlights

  • Finalized high-fidelity interactive prototype.
  • Refined and polished project and presentation based on feedback.
  • Prepared a professional presentation.

Hurdles:

Mainly trying to fight my sleeping schedule as an international student, managing my time to studying for exams, completing the task in this internship while dealing with the side effects of the COVID vaccine. Had to choose between a night’s sleep right before school finals or doing/preparing for the presentation in the wee hours of the morning.