Introduction to Project 1

The number one thing holding students back from getting hired is usually their lack of experience. This usually brings up the question - how can I gain experience if most of the positions require experience to get experience? See the problem?

The Radify team got frustrated about this problem. How can we hack the system? We started to brainstorm how we could help students get UX experience without actually needing UX experience.

As with every skill, UX, in particular, requires practice. It’s something you have to work at if you want to improve. Just like running, or soccer, or basketball. You’re not going to get better without dedication, practice, repetition, and feedback.

Consequently, we created a method that allows students to flex their UX muscles. A way that students can get UX experience that doesn’t require previous UX experience.

Starting today and every day for the next two weeks, you will be working with a small group to create two UX case studies (one each week). These case studies form the backbone of any successful UX designer’s portfolio. They are essential to getting you hired - they show how you think, interact with users, and in the end, solve problems. Each case study you complete tells as much about you as it does the product that you are redesigning.

For some context, here are a few great examples:

1. Twitter Ads platform redesign
2. Designing a pet diet app
3. The Future of the Airline website redesign

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! You'll learn more about these in the curriculum but there are a few different formats you can choose from. Here are a few articles that provide some good advice on conducting a user interview. Important piece of advice: the first interview you do will always be awkward and you'll always feel nervous beforehand! The goal is to get you comfortable doing them so that you'll stand out from other students your age!

• 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.

Crafting your group's own weekly pledge

For the past two weeks, by participating in this program, you've agreed to the 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.

Now that we're starting group work this week. We want you, along with your group, to create a pledge that you all agree to.

Why are we making you do this? Working together with a group is hard. I'm sure all of you have had a class group project that required you to do more than a fair share in order to get it completed on time. Group work is hard, and online group work can be even harder. Your group members might be in a very different time zone, your group members might be living a totally different schedule than you, or your group members might have things come up at home.

Today - we want you to work together to agree upon a Group pledge. You should include thing like how you would like to be treated, how responsive team members should be, what should be done if there's a disagreement, and finally, what the overall goal of the group is. You can use the Radify pledge as a template but we want to see your creativity shine through.

Work together with your team 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?"

You can create polls in Slack to help your team decide what to work on.