Sin título

Though we still have the last week to go of our UX/UI Design bootcamp, I feel the toughest part has already gone by 😅. 

The previous project was done individually so it was very challenging and so many things to do by myself that time didn’t seem to be enough. For the final project of the course, we are working in teams and I am 99.9% sure that my teammates are responsible of making this last week amazing and very rich in terms of how much I have been able to learn. For this last project I am working with @susanardisseny​ and @paulazabalaux​, both talented professionals that are very generous with their knowledge. We are working on an app that allows people that are residents outside the EU to be able to claim their shopping tax once they leave Spain. We have been having great ideas and I am liking our proposed design very much, so looking forward to get to the final prototype and be able to share it with our client.  The best part is that we have planned this project quite well and we have been able to stick to our schedule that I don’t feel as stressed as I did with other projects 🥳.

Yes, 2 weeks to go for the bootcamp to be over. This means that I have managed to make it though the final solo project, indeed!  It was a long and tough week. To be honest, I don’t mind working solo but the workload is much higher than when doing a team project so that meant long, very long hours of work. But every effort is worth it, as I was able to present everything in time in front of a UX expert who gave me very interesting feedback. 

I am very happy of what I was able to achieve but I am also aware of how much more I have to learn. This last weeks we will have several workshops and labs that I am really looking forward so as to keep on learning as much as possible! My biggest learning is how important it is to plan as soon as you start a project, allowing yourself to included buffers, to consider more time for those aspects that require a bigger challenge thus more time and try to stick to it as much as possible. 

As the rhythm of the bootcamp is literally non-stop, just after we all presented our projects, we were announced our teams and final project. I am very happy with the project we have to work with but happier with my team! I can’t wait to see the results we get to with this new challenge!

I am happy to say that we have achieved 2/3 of the bootcamp already! I can’t believe how fast this 6 weeks went but at the same time I feel I have been doing it for 5 months at least as it has become my almost 100% life focus. This week was a different one, not only for the content we saw but because there was no project presentation. Yes, you are reading correctly, no Friday presentations 😱. The reason for this is that we are working on our final solo project and it is so challenging that we need more than a week to work on it so we will be delivering it next Thursday. Moreover the presentations will be different too as we will be doing them in front of a UX/UI professional and in front of our classmates as we generally do.  This week wasn’t easy as we were dealing with lots of steps and techniques when working on our project. I managed to conduct 10 very insightful interviews that provided me tons of data, so clustering it and defining patterns took me a lot of time. Can’t wait to see the final result!  We had a few design labs, held by Helena, one of our awesome TAs, who taught us very useful tips when working on Figma, I am already applying it in my mid-fi prototypes 🤓.

This is a research technique that (thank God) existed way before COVID change the way of working. It allows teams to remotely view how software users interact with the system and the types of software customizations that have been made. Why I am talking about this? It will be part of my research process for this last individual project of the UX/UI Design bootcamp.

As we are still with mobility restrictions due to COVID, we will have to adapt and use different techniques as visiting companies is not an option. Thus my plan will be to:

Do some research to identify the accurate users: as for every project of this course, we have limited time to work on it so I need to be efficient when addressing the right users. 

Schedule and conduct RCI: in this point it is key to let the users know what can they except from the inquiry and the time that it will take. The recommended time is about 1 hours so I think I will stick to it. Will also think about creating some consent forms or be very clear when explaining that all the data gathered from them will be used only for my project and education purposes.

Analysing data: it is key to do this at early stages as the data gathered could be critical in shaping several aspects of my project (prototyping, scope, etc).

This week was a veeery long week but at the same time I felt it flew! 5 weeks into the bootcamp, we are half a way there and I can’t believe it. This week project was a team project in which we had to re-design a responsive website for a small local business. I worked with Alexandra and Gabrielle, both very talented when it comes to design and amazing ideas. We choose a small beauty salon in Barcelona and I can say that you wouldn’t believe how much did we manage to improve its website. Actually, you can take a peak at it below: 

I am happy to say that I have already achieved 1/3 of the UX/UI Design bootcamp. And with each week, comes a new challenge. This last week I worked on a project with 2 lovely classmates mohimonster and carlacavauxui. It was quite different to the previous challenges we had, as this time the goal was to add a feature to an already existing app. Our team had to design a survey feature for nothing less than Whatsapp. As you can imagine, this had its pros and cons. Having to follow Whatsapp’s design and UI helped and guide us a lot but at the same time, it brought with it a lot of constraints.  I am happy to say that we were able to finish the project and deliver our presentation in time. What made this possible? With no doubts, my team. It was the first time working with both of them and it was delightful. We all have different backgrounds and working experience, so it was amazing to see how could we combine our skills and ideas to come up with our final prototype.  My biggest learning this week was to learn how to not rush into decisions but take the necessary time to analice data and continue researching, even if it delays things. This was thanks to Moha and Carla, who are both very calm and take the necessary time to review things (I sometimes tend to rush into decisions).  For the upcoming week, the whole class is working solo, so hard days ahead. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to it as we will focus a bit more on the UI aspect, since till now we went deep into UX. I certainly need to awaken my creative and design side, but can’t wait to see what I am able to come up for Project #4!

For my 4th project of the UX/UI Design bootcamp I find myself facing a new challenge, design a travel app both for Android and iOS (the eternal battle ⚔️). But don’t worry, this post is not about giving my opinion of which operating system is better. I would like to share 5 guidelines that I will take into consideration when designing my project. 

I have decided to focus on iOS as the persona I will be using to define the flow and design of the app is Alicia, a 28 year old woman living in Barcelona who works as an International Buyer at Mango.

5 GUIDELINES FOR iOS:

1) Tap Bar: It is always located at the bottom of the interface and it is very handy as it allows rapid switching between screens. You should never use more than 5 options so as to avoid making it very crowded and hard to tap. The icons selected should always be top-level navigation options.

 2) Gesture-Based Navigation: Not all of Apple’s screens have a back button, so there is a gesture that covers this aspect and that works for almost all apps. The left-to-right swiping gesture will allow you to go back to the previous screen.

3) Microinteractions: I think this might be one of the main differences with Android as iOS is characterised for its scrolling and fluid transitions. As Alicia, my user persona, is an iOS user, she will expect to be able to dismiss a view by sliding it up from the bottom of the screen.  

4) Typography: San Francisco is the system typeface in iOS. It is a sans serif type family that includes SF Pro, SF Pro Rounded, SF Mono, SF Compact, and SF Compact Rounded.

5) Hamburger Menu:  Frequently used in iOS Apps as it allows saving screen space. I think this is a tricky one, as it gives you the possibility to nest several navigation options but stills maintaining a clean screen as its size can be very small BUT it is much less discoverable than a tap or navigation bar.

A design can be simple but that doesn’t mean it was easy to create it. As very well said by Ryan Olshavsky, Product Designer at Apple, in a Iterative UI Design presentation, “there are no shortcuts to great design”. I couldn’t agree more with this statement, as what makes  good design is not only the visual aspect of it but all the work and research done behind it and that made it look the way it looks. 

For my next project I will try the technique proposed by Ryan O. before presenting my design. This method is simple but I think it can be very efficient. The idea is that once you have come to your final design, you should take a moment to ask yourself “does the design feel right?”. Why do I think this technique can be very effective? Mainly because I think that when you spend so much time working on a project and following all the right steps and questions, you might end up losing your own perception and goals as a designer. I think that even if all the key questions such as “how well does it serve the goals?” or “does it include the right information?” are met, the design should also match your own criteria.

I have always wondered if what I consider good design would be seen the same way by somebody else. I used to think good design is something that is simply visually pleasing to the observer, so it made more sense to think that good design is completely subjective as we all see things differently. After 2 weeks of starting to get to know the UX/UI Design world, I can confidently say that good design is so much more than being pretty. 

As the “Learning to see” article very accurately says “visual and functional beauty are not completely independent”. On the contrary, they go hand in hand. Even if you had the visually most beautiful design, as long as it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be possible to consider it “good design”. The design concept involves, most importantly, functionality. Why? You just don’t design to make something pretty, you design to make something work. It is only once you make it work that you can start thinking of its aesthetic. Dieter Rams’ “Ten principles for good design” are quite accurate as well when defining what good design means. Only 1 of these 10 principles mentions the “pretty” aspect: “Good design is aesthetic”. Nevertheless, this same principle can’t help mentioning functionality as well “But only well-executed objects can be beautiful.”

The following quote is included in the previously mentioned article and it clearly defines how important was functionality considered by one of the most influential people in the tech world:   “[Design] is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”. —Steve Jobs

Interesting right? Moreover, I think this is where empathy gets involved in the designer’s path.  The design has to primarily work for the customer you are designing for, not only for yourself. Can this design “eye” be trained? Definitely. “Learning to see” has a very interesting point:

“With practice your intuition evolves, and the better you understand what you do, the deeper your intuition.”

I am happy to say that this second week of the UXUI Design Bootcamp has not been as exhausting as the first one. It’s funny as I have slept less than last week and I did go to sleep quite early yesterday but I wasn’t mentally tired as last Friday.  My previous post was basically a spoiler of this week’s project, which was the first we did individually. A huge challenge but I am quite proud of what I was able to achieve. There are so many things to consider while working on UXUI projects, that it can be very overwhelming and it is easy to think that you will not make it work before the deadline. 

Second week of the bootcamp and a very challenging one as we are working in an individual project for the first time! 

Our presentation is due on Friday but on Monday we were informed that by mid of the week we would be conducting a Group Crits with some of our classmates. 

To be honest, at the beginning I wasn't too enthusiastic about it as I thought it would mean “wasting” time I really needed to work on my project. My thoughts after it? It is worth it all the way! 

I definitely still need to work on being as accurate and straight forward as possible, as we only have 15 minutes to present, receive impressions and questions from our classmates and ask questions ourselves. Nevertheless, the session was very useful and my classmates gave me very interesting insights and comments on aspects I needed to improve to make Friday’s presentation as good as possible.

Another positive point from the session was that we could see where each one was in their project and allowed us to know if we were behind or in good terms. Moreover, I definitely got inspired from my classmate’s projects and I hope my feedback was also good for them. 

It is quite a cliche to hear about bootcamps being very intensive but I can now probe it from my own experience. It’s already Friday and I can’t believe that the first week of the UX/UI Design bootcamp has passed so fast but it was so intense that this is how I feel right now:

I am gladly impressed by how much I have learned this week. I look back at 2 weeks ago and there is no way I could have been able to do the project we presented today. Yes, first week and already a project done and presented to the rest of the class! I was lucky to have been paired with two lovely classmates, @valeorlandi​ and @jvelutini​, who made this first challenging project very enriching and we were able to align easily. 

After going over it in my head, having talked about it to so many people, working on the pre-work for weeks, getting mentally ready the first day of the UXUI Design bootcamp arrived! After an introduction to Ironhack and part of its staff, we were divided between Data and UX/UI students and we did a bit of an ice-breaker exercise to get to know our teachers and classmates. Great way to start getting to know the people will be working so close with during this next 9 weeks :)

All in all I can say I am gladly impressed with how well structured the course is. It is indeed well thought through and it seems we will not be wasting 1 single minute of these 9 short weeks.  To be very honest, I am eager to continue learning but also a bit scared of how overwhelming it all looks like, specially for somebody that doesn’t have a related background 🙋‍♀️, I hope I will be able to cope with it 💪 !