UX-4.1 Introduction to Project 2
Introduction to Project 2
Great work on completing the first case study together as a group!
This week will be continuing by doing a second case study. Again, the goal of these is to build your skill set and just like how athletes have to practice the same moves over and over again, UX designers have to practice the design process.
As a reminder, here are a few great examples of case studies.
All good UX cases have 3 parts: the framing, the process, the conclusion
The framing
Here is where you should explain the question that you tried to answer, and the context.
The process
This part of the case study explains the steps that you took to arrive at a solution. Here, you should highlight the steps that you took and illustrate those steps with sketches, photographs, diagrams or other design artifacts or deliverables that you produced. Bear in mind that the focus here is on the process, so the emphasis on iterations, rising challenges, alternatives, decision points, and conflict resolution is paramount.
The conclusion
This last part of the structure shows your final answer to the original question. It’s not enough here simply to show your final deliverable. In this section, you have to demonstrate impact – how did your designed product improve the situation?
This week's assignment
For this week, your group’s task is to create a UX case study.
This week, you will work through selecting an app, finding a problem, interviewing users, designing a solution, getting more feedback, and then writing about the story on Medium.
A note on daily exercise:
We realize that many of you are traveling/working/taking summer classes but we stress the importance of practicing daily. By practicing every day, you'll find that at the end of the challenge, you’ll be thinking about products in different ways. These write-ups don’t have to be masterpieces but they do take time to do. We recommend that you set aside 30-40 minutes a day to work on this challenge.
Pro-tip: Put time on your calendar to work on it each day. Be disciplined and try not to do anything else during those blocks of time.
A guide to staying on track
We know how hard it can be to scope out a project with a weekly timeline when you don't really know that much about the project. Here's a quick schedule that we recommend following.
Monday
Work together to choose an app (web or mobile) and a problem statement. For example, "How might Amazon decrease the number of abandoned carts on their mobile app?" or "How might Facebook Messenger encourage more direct messaging between a user's 5 closest friends?" or "How might Inuit's Mint mobile app become more useful to students or users who don't have regular cashflows?"
Tuesday
Take what you learned in week 1 to conduct a user interview! Here are a few articles that provide some good advice on conducting a user interview.
- How to conduct user interview (this goes a little more in-depth than for what you'll need but does a good job of painting a full picture.
- How to successfully conduct user interview in 6 simple steps
Wednesday
Today your team can start working on your redesign and making mockups with Figma. My biggest recommendation here is that you don't have to start making screen changes from scratch! You can take a screen shot of the current design, bring that into Figma and then just make design changes on top of the things that you want to change.
Thursday
Another design day! Use Thursdays to wrap things up, put final touches on your designs, and make sure you have all the screens that you need. If you have time, you can start drafting up some of your final write up.
Friday
Writing day! On Fridays you'll wrap everything up by writing an article about how you spent the week, the different steps you went through, the things you learned, the suggestions you made, etc. Your final piece should be structured in three parts: the framing of the problem, the process, and the conclusion. Remember, all you're doing is telling a story!
The Weekly Radify Pledge
I will do the hard part first.
I will adopt an attitude of positivity.
I will care for the people in my cohort,
And I will be an active participant in all group projects.
I promise to use the skills I learn this week for good, not evil.
I promise that even after this week, I will keep making a ruckus, building things, and putting good out into the world.
Finally, I promise to take what I learn and pass it along to someone else who would do a lot of good with the superpowers I learn these next four weeks.
Work together to choose an app (web or mobile) and a problem statement. For example, "How might Amazon decrease the number of abandoned carts on their mobile app?" or "How might Facebook Messenger encourage more direct messaging between a user's 5 closest friends?" or "How might Inuit's Mint mobile app become more useful to students or users who don't have regular cashflows?" Make sure it is fairly different from what you worked on last week.
You can create polls in Slack to help your team decide what to work on.
