Week 2
Technical Area
What I learned
- UI/UX primary research methods
- How to make affinity maps
- Introduction to R-Shiny
- Interview Conducting
- Gaining more insight into the Bioinformatics Pathway project
Tools
- Stem-away Platform
- Discord
- Notion
- Miro
- Google Drive
- Zoom
- Slack
- when2meet
Soft Skills
- Conducting interviews
- Teamwork and collaboration.
- Networking
- Time management
- Project Management
Three Achievement Highlights
- Getting to conduct primary research interviews with the bioinformatics team about the application they are working on
- Being able to organize the timezones for the teams to collaborate on the project
- Finished creating an affinity map based on the interviews
Tasks Completed
- Interviewing people from the Bioinformatics team for generative user research.
- Understanding the pain points and shortcomings of existing solutions.
- Understanding the team’s usability and development goals
- Discussing possible design interventions to cater to the needs and goals of the Bioinformatics team.
- Creating an affinity map from the collected interview data and brainstorming sessions.
Hurdles:
- Dealing with time zone differences for meeting up with team members
- Organizing interview responses since they vary depending on the interviewees
- Taking notes and recording interviews on Google Meets
- Deciding a platform to conduct interviews
Week 3
Things learned:
Technical:
- Creating Personas
- Journey mapping
- Visualizing UI/UX data from journey maps
Tools:
Softskills:
- Time management
- Teamwork and collaboration.
- Networking
- Communication
- Project Management
Highlighted achievements:
- Emphasized with users to create journey phases of the journey maps
- Organized data collected from research and interviews to create personas and journey maps for two core stakeholders.
- We managed to work around the team’s different time zones.
Hurdles faced:
- Time Management. We had to decide meeting times for three different time zones.
- Most of the team was new to making journey maps. We had to research online to find out the components of a journey map.
- Incorporating data from interviews into personas.
Tasks completed:
- Created a user persona and a journey map for each of the two core stakeholders.
- Listing possible design opportunities based on the personas and journey maps created.
Goals for the upcoming week:
- Focusing more on possible design opportunities
- Learning how to storyboard
- Create some UX flowcharts
- Create more meetings to discuss/debrief and do work
Week 4
Things learned:
Technical:
- Creating Design Proposals
- Creating UI/UX Flowcharts
- Visualizing UI/UX data and using them to create Storyboards
Tools:
- Figma
- Discord
- Notion
- Miro
Softskills:
- Time management
- Teamwork and collaboration.
- Networking
- Communication
- Project Management
- IDEO Brainstorming techniques
Highlighted achievements:
- Emphasized with to create a storyboard
- Organized data collected from research and interviews about the app to create UX flowcharts
- Setting up follow up interviews with our stakeholders, the bioinformatics team
Hurdles faced:
- Time management was the biggest issue, most of the members were extremely busy this week, and fortunately, I was able to work around that issue.
- Incorporating information gathered from the interview and using them to create storyboards and UX flowcharts
- I didn’t know any tools specific to storyboarding other than Figma and outside websites like boords.com.
Tasks completed:
- Created a storyboard and UX flowchart for both users
- Used information learned from the storyboarding and UX flowchart to brainstorm design proposals
Goals for the upcoming week:
- Focusing more on design notes to create wire flows
- Learn wireframing
- Focusing more on design principles
Week 5
Things learned:
Technical:
- Wireframing
- Making wire flows
- Gestalt Principles in UI design
Tools:
Softskills:
- Time management
- Teamwork and collaboration.
- Networking
- Communication
- Project Management
Highlighted achievements:
- Creating a wireframe using research gained from research findings and design principles
- Incorporating wire flows to see how each page of the app interacts with each other
- Incorporating Gestalt principles of UI design and heuristics into the wireframe.
Hurdles faced:
- Time Management. We had to decide meeting times for three different time zones.
- Most of the team was new to wireframing. We had to start from scratch.
- Figuring out a platform to create the wireframes.
Tasks completed:
- Created a wireframe based on research findings and design principles.
- Perfected the wire flow of the wireframe.
- Contacted the bioinformatics team to research the features they want to be implemented in their app and UI.
Goals for the upcoming week:
- Refining wireframes based on user and mentor feedback
- Learn user testing methods
- Make a prototype
Week 6
Things learned:
Technical:
- Prototyping
- User Testing
- Transitions
Tools:
Softskills:
- Teamwork and collaboration.
- Communication
Highlighted achievements:
- Assisted in prototyping a design based on our wireframes from the previous week and outside sources
- Created several interactive features of the prototype
- Brainstormed different assets we could use for the prototype
Hurdles faced:
- Learning how to prototype
- Finding design ideas from outside sources
- Time management
Tasks completed:
- Built a prototype
- Issued a feedback form to collect feedback from our users
- Learned about user testing methods
Goals for the upcoming week:
- Refining the high fidelity prototype
- Creating a draft presentation of the design issues, research findings, design process, and final product.
Week 7
Things learned:
Technical:
- Refining Interactive prototypes of our UI Design
- Hi-fidelity Prototyping
- Low fidelity prototyping
Tools:
- Figma
- Google Slides
- Notion
Softskills:
- Time management
- Teamwork and collaboration.
- Networking
- Communication
- Project Management
Highlighted achievements:
- Created a draft capstone presentation of our final product
- Improved the prototype based on the feedback from mentors
- Implemented design principles into our presentation of the finished product
Hurdles faced:
- Time management.
- Slide deck creation.
- Team management. A few of the members were busy.
Tasks completed:
- Created a slide deck to present the final product.
- Incorporated feedback from the bioinformatics team into our improved design
Goals for the upcoming week:
- Present the final product in our final capstone project presentation.
Week 8 Self Assessment
Things learned:
Technical:
Tools:
- Figma
- Discord
- Notion
- Canva
Softskills:
- Presentation Skills
- Product testing
Highlighted achievements:
- Finished the final prototype of the UI for an R Shiny app
- Edited Final Presentation based on previous week’s feedback from mentors
- Prepared for a professional presentation with the mentors of the program
Hurdles faced:
Tasks completed:
- Hi-fidelity prototyping
- Editing the presentation
- Presenting the presentation
Goals for the upcoming week:
- Finalize presentation based on feedback