Learnings from 2 weeks UX Design Kickstarter workshop by UX Anudeep
Introduction
Hello all, Piyush this side, and this is an article where I will be sharing my learnings from the UX Design Kickstarter workshop and its impact on me.
Just a bit about me
My name is Piyush and I’m a UX Design student, currently learning design from various sources such as books, videos, and people. I started my design journey with Graphic Design and soon found out about User Experience (UX) specifically, the UI part of UX looked pretty interesting to me so started learning more about it.
It has been a few months since I started diving deep into UI/UX Design because I was sure about making a career in it. As I’ve been learning for some time, I always had doubts in my mind if what I’m learning is authentic. “Authentic” word comes into your mind when there’s overwhelming information available on the internet but you have no idea what’s right or wrong according to the industry because you’re not a part of the industry yet. It also comes to your mind when you don’t have a community and/or a mentor to who you can reach out when facing any problems.
Let's just say I’m familiar with both the cases and out of curiosity and seeking authentic information about UX Design, I joined a 2-week workshop that was constantly being bombarded on my Instagram feed as an ad. Now with all that context about me, let’s dive deep into the learnings that I’ve had so far while doing this workshop.
Day 1: Starting off the workshop by Kickoff call
Day 1 started with a video call with our mentor UX Anudeep (Anudeep Ayyagari-UX Designer at Amazon currently). It was about an introduction to design and design thinking but in a very non-textbook manner, it was very engaging from the start. This call also gave us a peek at what a UX Designer does and more importantly the mindset one has to have to become a good UX Designer which was “Student for life”. This means one must have the willingness to learn for life.
A few points which I learned from the first call itself are:
- We don’t give direct solutions to people’s problems. Most of the time it’s the symptoms that people want the solution for. Instead, we should dig deep into the problem by asking the right questions and trying to understand what the actual problem is.
- Designing for the User+Business Impact via Design+Excellent in Tools = High Performing & High Earning UX Designer.
- Questioning the Obvious. There’s no better teacher than the products which we use on daily basis. It is designed in such a way that we hardly even notice because it’s so obvious. But we should question the obvious to understand the reasoning behind the design.
Day 2: Learning from existing design
Following up on the day 1 learnings, on Day 2 we had to practice learning from existing design by questioning the current designs of apps and products which we see around us on daily basis and thinking about how they might have been designed.
We also had to make a replica of the UI of a calculator app in Figma. This task was particularly easy for me as I have previously explored Figma. Still, I completed the task and got answers to questions such as “Why are the numbers at the bottom and the screen at the top in any calculator app?”
Day 3: Introduction to UX Design principles
From Day 3, we were introduced to Design principles but in a very non-textbook approach. The first principle which was introduced to us was Jakob’s Law.
Jakob’s law states that: Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means your users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites/apps they already know.
What I understood from this law was that as users spend most of their time on other sites, we should try to give users a familiar experience. We should not re-invent the wheel by re-imagining the common known patterns by the users. Instead, we should use the common patterns to solve the problem which hasn’t been solved in a creative way which gives a sense of familiarity but also solves the user's problem, so users can easily focus on what the product has to offer.
Day 4: Fitt’s Law
On Day 4, we learned about Fitt’s law and also created a UI Design of a music player screen to better understand the application of Fitt’s law. Fitt’s Law states that: The time to acquire a target is the function of the distance to and the size of the target.
What I understood was that the nearer and bigger the object is to the thing we are interacting with, the easier it is to interact and vice versa. In digital products such as smartphones, we are mostly interacting with our fingers and primarily our thumb so the bigger and closer any element on the screen to our thumb the easier it is for our thumb to reach and interact with the element and vice versa.
Day 5: Work on yourself
On Day 5, we had to work on ourselves. A workbook was given for each individual to know themselves in a better way. The idea was to get to know our fundamental qualities by answering some questions and trying to understand what we enjoy doing most. The things which we enjoyed doing in our childhood can teach us so much about ourselves. I did complete this workbook but I think I’ll do it one more time to know myself in a better way.
Day 6: Q&A Call
Day 6 was all about the Q&A call with our mentor Anudeep sir. On this day we could ask our questions, and doubts regarding our personal situation as well. From Day 1 itself, I was a part of a very helpful discord community consisting of people who were on this journey with me. Some really good questions were asked by the community as sir answered them with a lot of depth to each answer. Most of my questions and doubts were also answered and cleared. Image of the call
Day 7: Introduction to animation and Prototyping
This day was about the basics of Animation and prototyping in Figma. This is a very beginner-friendly course so a lot of things are covered from the basics. It was about the basics of Smart-Animate in Figma. As I’ve explored Figma previously, I could easily complete this task.
Day 8: The Mega Webinar
Sounds like some grand movie title doesn’t it? It sure was only more learning and twice or thrice the length of an average movie. What did I learn in this webinar? A lot.
As with every webinar till now, this wasn’t any less interactive. We completed 4 workbooks in the webinar itself. We started by answering some questions about existing designs with our common sense and later realized that whatever we’ve been answering was actually because our mentor wanted to teach us 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design by Jakob Nielsen but by giving us proper examples using the apps we already use on day to day basis.
Till then I used to think that UI Design is only about colors, typography, spacing, hierarchy, consistency, etc but later realized that Heuristics play an equally important part in User Interface design and also that Interactions and feedbacks are also equally important for User Interface Design.
We learned and quickly performed low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping. As a part of low fidelity, we built a very quick interactive logical prototype within minutes using an app called Marvel. We can build quick interactive prototypes with this app which works pretty well. I did not know about this app but now I do and I can quickly test an idea without investing time and effort in building a Figma prototype. Marvel would be usually used when our idea is in very early rough stages and we are trying to quickly test a flow and get quick feedback. High-fidelity prototypes were created in Figma.
We also learned more about some business terms and metrics on this call as the business is a very important part of the design. Conversion metrics, Retention metrics, Daily active users metrics, and more were introduced to us. I especially am excited to learn how can design affect these metrics and help businesses in the coming days.
Day 10: Hick’s Law
Hick’s law states that: The time it takes to take a decision increases by the number and complexity of the choices.
What I understand from this principle is that we as designers need to help users in making decisions by decreasing the number of options and also decreasing the complexity of the decision to help users in deciding quickly without much hassle.
Day 11: Doherty Threshold
Doherty Threshold states that Productivity Soares when a user and a computer interact at a pace <400 ms that ensures that neither has to wait on the other. What I understand from this principle is that human brains are extremely fast and after an action has been performed, a result of the action is also expected and users don’t like waiting for more than 400ms (Less than 1/2 sec). So if the process is supposed to take more than 400ms then it’s likely that we as designers might have to think of a way to convey the process to the users as feedback so that they know they have to wait for some time to get the expected results. This would result in a satisfactory experience without letting the users feel frustrated and clueless.
We also created an animated prototype using this principle.
Day 12: Zeigarnik Effect
Zeigarnik's effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Also, people are more likely to complete a task if only a part of it is left.
Day 13 & 14: Components in Figma and Writing case study
Day 13 was all about exploring and trying powerful things in Figma such as components. This part was optional because components can be a bit overwhelming for beginners but I had tried learning components so was okay with me. I was even introduced to just a very tiny bit of Design systems but it was just like an introduction. I would have liked to know about Design Systems in-depth but it’s understandable, that design systems can be intimidating for beginners even for me. I have such curiosity and love for design systems, I cannot explain so I get excited when it is being discussed.
And Day 14 was all about compiling all our learnings and writing an article so that we reflect back on them and solidify them.
These two weeks were packed with learning, unlearning, and relearning. I have to put in more practice and learn about a lot of things sir mentioned in depth such as heuristics. But this is a start, and it’s a good one. I hope to keep learning and implement my learnings as well in the near future. That was all from my side.
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