UX Blog

Apparently I've been writing this blog for something like 8 years. Over that time I have used it as a way to keep motivated on my creative journey and I have to say I love writing these little posts.
I'm aware though that in recent months my interest in UX Design has been creeping in and while it is a creative endeavour, that's not what this blog is supposed to be about.
So over the Christmas holidays I created a new blog which is linked to my portfolio purely for posts about UX, leaving this one free for the wonderful world of wool, or paper or whatever I happen to be working on this week.
So if you are only here because of the UX or you are interested in reading my thoughts on UX please visit my new UX blog.
Normal service will commence here next week...

My portfolio

You might remember this image from Week 7 of UXDI when I started working on my portfolio

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a bit, might have noticed that my little logo has now appeared in the top right corner along with the links to other social media.  If you're brave you might even have clicked it and found yourself on my portfolio.

This portfolio has been long in the making and is in fact my second attempt.  The point is to show my UX skills off so people can see the sorts of projects I have worked on and my design methodology, and because I like a challenge and I like to learn new things I built it from scratch in HTML and CSS, rather than use a template.  This does mean that its not responsive yet, but I'm working on this and soon it will look just as good on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop.  Normally I would have build it the other way round so it looked good on the mobile first, however I had a deadline to work to.  But I did have the mobile version in mind when designing the desk top, so it shouldn't be to hard to amend.

Feel free to go have a look and if you have any comments do let me know.

UXDI - Week 9

Luis explaining something to me

Another busy week as we went into the second week of our client project.  This week was all about design and actually started on Sunday when we spent the day at Ben’s house working on a first rough paper prototype.
This gave us something to test on Monday and as the week progressed we made changes and made it clickable, then into hi fidelity mock ups.
We met with Rishabh on Tuesday and Thursday and I think he was happy with the work we’ve done.  We’ll find out for real when we present the proposed design to him on Wednesday.

Second Home where our client works

Again it was another great week.  We’ve worked hard and I’m tired and suffering with a bit of a cold, but I’ve come home happy most night’s knowing that we are really making headway with the project.

Me with Simon, Zhenjie and Ben

To keep me going I’ve started to listen to some podcasts in the mornings when there is nothing I can do on the train.  My favourite is the Design Details podcast where Brian and Byne talk to designers based in San Francisco.  It is always interesting, inspiring and full of things that I can identify with and as long as I don’t think about the fact that most of them are younger than me by a good 5 years but are still talking about 'full careers', then it’s fine.

Having my photo taken

On Tuesday we had headshots done.  A quick photo session with a professional to give us good photos for our portfolios and social media.
On Thursday I attended the Mobile UX meet up at ustwo.  It was a really inspiring session called UX for Good.  I could have stayed there all night listening to the stuff they’ve worked on and their process.  One of the project was MoodNotes which feels like it really might help people.  These are the sort of projects I want to work on!
And then on Friday afternoon Christian and James from Sword and Stone came to help us with our presentation skills.

Creating our first paper prototype

With just a week to go, there still seems to be an awful lot to do but the idea of sleeping until 7am, going for a run any time I want and a bit of evening knitting are beautiful things I am looking forward to and will keep me going for the last 7 days.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 on UXDI. 

UXDI - Week 7

This week was Front End Web Development (FEWD) week.
About 7 years ago I did a part time distance learning course on all things web.  At the end of it I was awarded the Master CIW Web Site Manager certificate, but didn’t really use it although it did give me the confidence to apply for the role in the Digital Team which kinda got me to where I am right now.
At the end of the course I created a website for ‘im outdoors but other than that in the last 7 years I haven’t really done any coding, just some basic stuff for HTML emails or web forms for work.

My code

So I wasn’t sure how this week would go, and while I was pretty rusty I was surprised how quickly it came back.  I also really enjoyed having someone to ask when things weren’t going quite to plan, something you can’t really do when distance learning.

Andrew made the classes fun and even those who had been feeling worried about it came up with some great results.  We also had Keith helping, a graduate from the Web Development Immersive course.

And how my page actually looked

The point of the week wasn’t to learn how to use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery in a week, but to help us understand what developers are doing and get us to start reading code, even if we can’t write it.  From experience I know this makes it a lot easier to work with the development team and makes it a quicker and more pleasant experience for everyone.

So now I have to decide if I want to code up my own portfolio or use a template.  Both solutions have their own pros and cons but I have to say I’m leaning towards doing it myself.  I guess it will all depend on how much time I have to do it, and maybe even how much support there is too.

The UXPA panel

In other news I am feeling pretty exhausted now as I attended the Ladies that UX meet up on Tuesday and the UXPA meet up on Thursday.  Ladies that UX was held at Google this month and covered International Research, while UXPA covered The Role of UX in Advertising.  Both were really interesting and gave me much to think about, especially about the ethics of UX.

The other thing to think about this week was my CV.  We had a CV workshop on Wednesday afternoon which gave us some good tips on things to include (or not to include) on a CV.

And finally we no longer have the top floor to ourselves as the next UXDI class started this week.  Its odd not being able to spread out anymore.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on UXDI.  

UXDI - Week 6

Week 6 was all about Visual Design and after the last 5 weeks it was a nice change.  There was still much to learn, but it was a little less intense.
Andrew was taking a back seat this week as Tricia was running the class.  She’s from America and has run the UXDI course in New York and London so knew exactly what she was doing.
The aim of the week was to take our app designs from Week 1 and make them look nice.  To do this we used a programme called Sketch (although some people stuck with things like Photoshop if that’s what they were used to).
Not only could we make our old designs look nice but we could fix the problems which were now obvious to us after 5 weeks of intensive UX training.

Dan's app Dare, allows you to dare your friends to do activities

 I was sitting next to Dan this week and was intrigued to watch him create his rocket icon for his app.  I’m new to visual design and Sketch so I’ve been learning as I go along, but I’ve learnt lots from just watching what he’s been doing and asking for help when needed from the guys who have visual design backgrounds - particularly Dan and Stratis.  Thanks guys.  The TA’s Tom and Mollie were also invaluable resources. 

Moodboard for my app

We also had a field trip out to the Design Museum to look at the Design of the Year nominations.  The range was amazing, but I did find myself drawn to the designs which aimed to improve life by filtering city air, removing plastic from the sea, or responsive street furniture which helps disabled people, amongst others.  It was nice to see Monument Valley (see week 2) nominated! 

Style Tile - helps me to keep my design focused

And as we aren’t going to present any projects in the next couple of weeks, we were asked to do flash talks (2 a day) - 5 minutes on a subject we’re interested in.  I had the privilege of going first on Monday afternoon, so put together some slides on making paper (what else?!).  The photos from this blog came in very handy.  I made sure to take some samples with me too which everyone loved!

Before: How my app looked by the end of week 1

After: How my app looked by the end of week 6

 So all in all a very satisfying week.  It was amazing to see the metamorphosis of my grey design of week 1 into a beautiful colourful butterfly.  It’s hard to even recognise it.  I’m still no visual design expert but maybe with a little practice I can do this.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on UXDI.

UXDI - Week 5

Walking across the Thames to catch the late train home

Hello October!  Hello week 5!  Where did September go?!

I think this has been the most difficult week so far of UXDI.  Second week of project 3 and everyone is feeling the pressure. 
Project 3 is a team project and so while learning more new UX methods we have also been learning how to work with each other as a team.  
Teams are tricky things at the best of times and can take a while to really gel, so expecting perfection in 2 weeks is a bit silly but I’ve worked in teams for the past 15 years and never had problems like this!  
I have thought about this a lot over the last week or so and have come to the conclusion it is mostly because no-one on this project had a job title and so no clearly defined set of tasks to do.  The fact we also had 4 strong personalities probably didn’t help either.

Redesigning a remote control - not as easy as you might think

The week was mostly workshop time letting us work on prototypes of our design and test them, before putting together the presentation for Friday.
We did have a lecture on Interface Design and one on how to use Axure but I think we all agreed that we’d maybe leave Axure to another project.  It’s an amazing programme but looks like you could get pretty complex pretty quick.

Pin up of all our work so far

On Wednesday we had a guest speaker Jo Phillips from BlackRock.  I found her very inspiring.  It was so nice to hear someone being so honest about the challenges of working in a large business and trying not only to bring UX in but Lean too.  Some of the things she said really rang true from where we tried some of these things at the University.

Anyway, we got there in the end and I’ve learnt a hell of a lot about how  teams work.  The Friday presentation went really well and we got some good feedback.

Next week we’re back working on our own and onto Visual Design week which should be very interesting.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3 and 4 on UXDI.

UXDI Week 4

Team Quora

Week 4 and I think everyone is starting to feel it a bit.  We are all tired and some of us are ill (yep me too) and we’ve had our first drop out taking us down to 17 students.  (I think this was a joint decision as I don’t think her English was good enough for the pace of the class)

This week we start on Project 3.  This one is a team project and I’m working with Liv, Walter and Zein.

Zein and Walter discussing personas

Not living in London hasn’t been an issue, and I’m not sure it’s an issue now, but it has meant the team have had to plan more.  On Sunday we had to meet up to discuss the project.  But I couldn’t really afford or face the hour and a half journey up and back for an hour and a half meeting.  Luckily Skype stepped in and allowed us to meet to discuss everything we needed to be ready for Monday.  Then during the week Trello and Slack have helped us keep in touch out of class hours.
Lessons over the week included project planning, user research and its deliverables, creating surveys, contextual inquiries, mobile design, personas and designing to be accessible.  All fascinating stuff.

Affinity map of our research so far

Our brief looks at the website Quora so our research needed to look at Q&A’s and AMA’s (Ask Me Anything).  First things first we needed to create a survey to send out to as many people as possible.  

A big thank you for everyone who took the time to fill it in!  Without your answers we would have nothing to base our design on!  

If you haven’t filled it in and want to the survey will be live for a little longer.

By the end of the week we had enough survey result and user interviews (thanks to anyone who allowed me to interview them too!) done to allow us to run another design studio - to help us come up with ideas before making our first paper prototype.

Purely by chance I attended the monthly UXPA event this week, which happened to be a panel Q&A discussion on ‘Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about design (but were too afraid to ask)’.  Perfect for our project!  It was a great event and I took many notes on how a real life Q&A session works.  
I’ve been volunteering with UXPA for about a year now - normally I’m on the door handing out name badges and ticking people off the guest list - for doing this I get to sit in some really interesting talks and discussions.  All of which have helped with my understanding of UX and Design.

Proto-personas

On Tuesday we also had a panel of ex UXDI student come and speak to us about life after GA.  They are all doing some really cool stuff now and look pretty happy.  Maybe in the future I’ll be able to sit up there and try to inspire and reassure some future students.  That would be really cool.

And on Friday we had a guest speaker, Ross Robinson who was a recruiter before he did UXDI.  He came to give us tips on working with recruiters to find a job after the course, or as he said why wait till then - get looking now!

Friday was also Graduation for the UXDI7 cohort - the guys who did this course over the summer.  GA is all about community so we were invited to come along and meet them and celebrate with them.  But before that we were kicked out so they could get the rooms set up, so we went for a class dinner together at a local pizza place.  So nice to just chill together with no deadlines or need to talk UX.  These guys are all amazing.

Class dinner before going to graduation

Then back up the 4 flights of stairs to the party.  I didn’t stay too long as I was starting to feel pretty ill (its just a head cold), but the bit of the party I saw was great.  It's weird how big the classrooms look without tables in and no post-it notes on the walls.

I’ve plenty to get on with over the weekend, but hopefully I can catch up on some sleep too and feel better for Monday.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2 and 3 on UXDI.

User research

Coming up with questions for our survey

So we’re into week 4 now and rather than just be given pre-done research to base our projects on we are now starting to do our own research.  So if you’d like to help me out on learning how to conduct user research please give me 3 mins of your time and fill in my survey.  Come back on Saturday to hear how I’m getting on.

Thank you!

UXDI - Week 3

Wireframe for one of the pages on my mini site

So that was week 3 and project 2.  It wasn’t quite as intense as week 1 and 2 in the sense that there were a few less lectures but there was still a tonne to do.
It helped that I had spent the weekend creating wireframes for my site, so on Monday I was in about the right place.  But I know that some people have started to feel the strain a bit.  I have to say that the two hours on the train every day have actually been quite helpful.  Time to work and no internet to distract.

Pin up of all my work so far (that day) for project 2

We started the week looking at Navigation and how it is important that we make sites that our users can learn, rather than having to remember where things are.
We then looked at web forms.  In my old role I created many web forms and yet I never thought about half the things covered in the lecture!

Wireframe sketches before getting them into OmniGraffle

We also looked at creating another clickable prototype this time using inVision.  Its quite a nice site to use and made my prototype feel like a real site, even if it didn’t look like it.
With clickable prototypes all set up we could then start testing and collecting feedback, before fixing any issues and testing again.  Over the week I think I managed 4 iterations, but there are still things I could do to improve my prototype.
On Friday we presented our projects to the class which went quite well.  I got good feedback with some good pointers for improving.  And before we'd even had time to congratulate ourselves we were given the brief for project 3!

Presenting Project 2

On Tuesday evening I went to the September Ladies that UX London meeting, this month at AKQA.  I’ve been going to these monthly meetings for nearly a year now and always find them interesting and useful.  I couldn’t help but smile when the subject this month covered prototyping.

And on Wednesday we had another guest lecture.  This time it was Amit Patel who is an ex UXDI student from this time last year and is now a Product Manager at ADIO (launching later this month).  It was great to see how UX fits into his role and to see how you don’t have to have a job with UX in the title to be using it.

Testing my prototype with Ayo

So another grand week with the only problem being my jealousy of the runners I see as I walk from Waterloo to class.  I’d much rather be running, although with a 15lb (7kg) pack I’m not sure I’d be able to.

I look forward to much sleep this weekend to start week 4 and project 3 fresh and full of beans.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1 and 2 on UXDI.

UXDI - Week 1

Sketching global elements of a web page

It’s a week since I started my new adventure on UXDI (User Experience Design Immersive) with General Assembly (GA).  It doesn’t feel like a week, it feels more like a year with all the information and activities they have packed into it.
We started on a wet Bank Holiday Monday - too much to cover to miss a day, and who really minded as the rain came down outside.
Weirdly we are based exactly opposite where I did my paper making course a couple of years ago!
There are 18 of us, mostly guys but I’m used to that, with tutor Andrew and Luis, Mollie and Tom in support - all ex students from the course.
The atmosphere is great, with lectures in the morning and workshop in the afternoon, letting us put into practice what we’ve learnt that day straight away.

This first week has been all about learning the basics; a little bit of user research, some sketching and some prototyping.  Put like that it doesn’t seem like so much but the real list goes:
Stand up (were we cover what we did yesterday, what we'll do today and any problems we're having - all in 30 seconds)
User Research
User interviewing (including the 5 W's and a H - Who, What, Where, When, Why and How)
Participatory Design (where you work with your user to create designs)
Concept maps (bit like a mind map)
Sketching ideas and interfaces
User flows (both tasks and page flows)
Storyboarding
Paper prototyping
Prototyping using the app POP
User testing (to make sure your idea works)

All of this with the premise that we design an app for our design partner which will help them in their day to day life to be presented to the class by the end of the week.

Paper Prototyping

It felt like a bit of scramble, but we all did it, and some of the ideas and presentations were pretty good, with, I think we worked out, only really about a day and a half to work on them.
We should get a bit longer for the next project…

My first project presentation

My biggest issue has been the commute into and out of London every day.  The whole journey door to door takes just over one and a half hours which has knocked my morning runs on the head and cut the amount of time I can spend with ‘im outdoors.  But I have tried to make use of that hour on the train each way, sketching and writing notes although there is only so much you can do on a train.  I have no doubt that this will get better the more I do it.

My office on the train

When they named the course Immersive they really meant it and with 9 more weeks I feel a mixture of excitement about what we will learn next and slight trepidation about the work still to come, but I imagine that’s because its 7am and I’m sleepy and writing this on the train (see, I told you I tried to make good use of that hour).
It’s been a good week, and I can say I have learnt tonnes, I know that I will learn tonnes more and I haven’t been bored at any point (one reason for leaving my job).  I look forward to next week and building on what I’ve learnt so far.

Garden Escapes website

It’s taken a while but I’m very pleased to say that the Garden Escapes website is now live.  Jen and Nick who run Garden Escapes are old friends from when I was at landscaping college, where I also met ‘im outdoors.  When they saw the Thrive Landscapes website I created a few years back, they asked me to design them one.

The process could have been a lot quicker but we are all very busy people and there always seemed to be months between meetings.  But it is live now and I’m very pleased with the end result.  It has meant learning how to use dreamweaver, but I’m all for learning new things.

Now back to the essay…

CIW Web Design Specialist

Yesterday I took the second exam toward the Master CIW Web Site Manager qualification. This was the CIW Web Design Specialist exam and consisted of questions covering Site Development Essentials, Web Design Elements, and Basic and Advanced Web Technologies.
I managed to pass with 79%, which considering I’m only doing this in my spare time, and not every day in my job, I’m quite pleased with. It means I can now call myself a CIW Professional and a CIW Web Design Specialist.

To be honest I’m not sure I will end up with the final qualification as that would mean also taking tests on JavaScript, Peal and Server administration, and as I don’t use any of these things at all, it would take a huge amount of work for me to pass all three. But I’m still happy. The CIW Web Design Specialist was the qualification I was really working towards and I’m pleased to have passed.

CIW Associate

Over the last 3 weeks I’ve been revising hard. ‘im outdoors has had the sofa to himself while I’ve been sat in the study reading up the course notes from my Web Design course from 2 years ago. (you are advised not to take the test till you’ve completed the course)
Yesterday I finally took the test – CIW v5 Foundation Exam.
This is the first of 5 exams if I want the qualification CIW Website Design Manager and covered Internet Business Foundations, Site Development Foundations and Network Technology Foundations.
Its years since I’ve taken a test and to be honest I found it pretty nerve-racking.
Half way though I really thought I’d failed as there were so many questions which I had to guess.
But in the end I came out with 63/85 – 10 above the pass mark. Yay!
So now I’m a CIW Associate, exciting stuff.

Now the revision is done I can get on with all the other things I need to do, like TMA 02, finish my Christmas shopping and tidy the flat ready for Christmas…

Thrive website finished

Wow look its December and nearly Christmas!
Like you could have forgotten.

Amongst all the shopping for gifts online, odd bits of writing for A363 and revision for my first web design exam I’ve finally got ‘im outdoors website up and running on a proper address. So now you can visit it on www.thrivelandscapes.org. It’s a real relief to have it all finished and it means we can start to think about new business cards – a good start to the new year I think.
One thing ticked off a long list…

Thrive Landscapes - LIVE!

Did you all have a lovely bank holiday?
I know it rained but I didn’t mind so much as it made it easier for me to finally finish the website for ‘im outdoors. Now instead of 2 pages of nothing much, he has 7 pages and a flickr page which I hope enhance his business.

Check out the new Thrive Landscapes pages and tell me what you think. If something doesn’t work on your browser let me know what it was and the browser and I’ll try and fix it. If something isn’t simple or you can’t work out how to do something tell me. I’ve tried to make it as user friendly as possible, but it’s easy to get too close to things. I hope this is the start of something good.