Week 5 - Good NEWS 🗞 !

This week, I am going to step off my user experience soap box, and share with you all some really exciting news. 

But.... 

What's good news without a little back story. 

(Disclaimer: Okay, I lied. Back to my soap box 😎) 

When I first began researching what user experience truly entailed, I came across this Medium post that questioned whether aspiring UX professionals truly needed a master's degree in UX. It helped me answer a lot of the questions I had concerning why would I want to spend money and time pursuing a graduate degree in UX design: 

1. To gain new skills and academic wisdom and do a deep dive into particular areas of the UX.
2. To get exposure to new things, ideas, viewpoints, and ways of thinking about design.
3. To work on [my] own thesis or project with total control and freedom.
4. To improve [my] researching, writing, and analyzing skillset.
5. To enhance your professional network.

These reasons coupled with mentor recommendations and advice ushered me into more research. I began searching for graduate programs that met my academic and professional needs. I knew I wanted to begin working immediately after graduation, but I did not want this to hinder my academic pursuits, so a fully online program was definitely something I needed. I also wanted to maintain some flexibility in my schedule while I pursued my Master’s so that I could still enjoy life outside of work and school (travel, conferences, etc.). 

After a great deal of research, I discovered Kent State's Online Master of Science in User Experience Design program and was quickly drawn in after noticing how the program's objective aligned with my future academic aspirations: to establish a competitive portfolio, and to build a transformative career within the user experience design field by mastering design and information architecture principles and standards via graduate studies. It did not take me long to begin preparing and collecting the necessary admissions requirement materials. 

Only a couple weeks after successfully getting my application in, I am pleased to announce that I have received my first acceptance letter into a user experience graduate program. I believe this particular Kent State program ensures that its graduates leave with a rich understanding of the psychological motivations and desires that draw users to particular products or services. I truly look forward to learning about advanced topics in the field of user experience design, and improving my design and user research skills through coursework assigned throughout the duration of the program. 

Week 4 - User Experience Research

Fresh off the heels of a week devoted to understanding the psychology and culture of a user, I dived a bit further into UX research (sometimes referred to as design research). Understanding the importance of user experience research and how it can ultimately improve my understanding of my audiences' needs, goals, motivations, and behavior will holistically prevent me from designing for one user -- myself. User research provides insight on who the users are, how and why they intend to use the product/service, and what they need the design to do. 

According to Joel Marsh, there are three (3) basic types of question that can be answered by a user: 

1) open questions, or questions that allow the user to elaborate on their thoughts, ideas, or opinions 

2) leading questions, or questions that instruct the user to answer a specific idea, thought or feature highlighted in the questions, and 

3) closed/direct question or questions that can be answered with only binary options (yes/no, good/bad, smile/frown, etc.)

Constructing the ideal blend between these questions allows you to discover areas of interest or concern for the user in an effort to explore alternative solutions that cater to the user's needs. These questions should remain consistent from user-to-user so that the information retrieved is unbiased across each medium of research (interviews, card sorting, surveys, etc.) 

In addition, Marsh revisited the topic of user-profiles (often referred to as user personas), and how it allows designers to describe the goals, expectations, motivations, and behavior of real people derived, in part, from data collected from research. When working on personas for my project last week, I had to keep in mind that I was not designing a service to support the current behavior of the user: if that was the case, there would be no need to generate a solution to an already working fix. Instead, Marsh emphasized that UX designers are trying to nudge those users toward an "ideal" version of themselves by giving them an optimal solution that hones in on their needs. 

PROJECT UPDATE: 

Derived from last week's sketch concepts or "paper wireframe", this week I successfully completed my first draft of a low fidelity wireframe which captures the basic content and visuals of the registration application. 

This lo-fi wireframe will be used to help map out the structure of the interface, its screens, and the basic information architecture. 

Lo-fi Wireframe Artboards (3 of 10)

In addition, I created my first micro-usability test plan which contains a necessary consent form, logging sheeting, user test script, a post-test questionnaire that will be used when conducting user tests next week with several users and my lo-fi wireframe. 

As I prepare next week’s task, I have been constructing a list of potential test users to reach out to who closely align with the user personas I created last week. I plan to also invite a few unconventional users as well who I believe will provide insight into areas that I may have missed.  

Week 3 -- Let's Go!

Hi, everyone. 

A little late, but I’m backkkkk.

This week was probably one of the most rewarding weeks thus far. I had the opportunity to finally jump back into a subject that I’ve longed to explore since my high school departure —psychology!

As I didactically explored the elements of psychology, culture, and emotions, I did so from a place of empathetic understanding of the user’s experience. During these lessons, I wanted to ensure that I fully grasped what it means to be a user, and how these ideas ultimately affect the experience or lack thereof, a user has with a particular product/service.

Psychology: 

Unsurprisingly, psychology plays a large role when attempting to understand the user(s)’ goals, desires, and/or behavioral patterns. Since psychology focuses on studying and understanding the human mind (especially those affecting behavior in a given context), I believe that psychology is the same for everyone (more or less) since we all function by virtue of the same machine — the brain.  Understanding psychology allows UX designers to answer things like why people share, or what leads to competition amongst users within a product/service. 

Culture: 

In contrast, a user’s culture, in a sense, can honestly be anything. Derived from achievements, topics of interest, customs, and particular practices, a user’s way of life will ultimately change and/or expand overtime “as users want to personalize or categorize things more and more” (Marsh). 

According to Joel Marsh, an experience encapsulates the following six parts: 

1. what the user feels, 
1. what the user wants,
1. what the user thinks,
1. what the user believes, 
1. what the user remembers, and
1. what the user does not realize.

These user-centric ideas usher in the discipline of psychology and the understanding of culture calling for designers to cater to particular areas of user interest and/or concern in an effort to provide the best user experience. 

Project Update: 

As I completed Milestone 2, I had the opportunity to examine competitors and perform a SWOT analysis in efforts to discover what elements within these other platforms and services are areas of interest or concern for users. 

I also had the chance to put my Needs Finding Plan into action as I interviewed Baylor students. Within these interviews, I applied affinity diagrams as my means to organize many ideas into groups with common themes or relationships. Each interviewee had the opportunity to formulate categories based on a list of various, potential features and requirements derived from my SWOT analysis. This allowed me to discover the relationship between those features from the users’ perspectives, and ultimately provided design direction to be established based on the associations presented from the users. 

In addition, I began constructing personas that catered to the audience of this particular project, and also drafted a few sketches and concepts that I anticipate will be consolidated into concept storyboards within the next milestone. 

Master Dashboard Sketch (1 of 5)

Project User Persona (1 of 3)