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.