Week 10 - Wireframing and Christmas.

Welcome to Week 10! 

I am going to start with something really not related to the course but I saw a very interesting BBC Documentary about the real effects of alcohol and learned about the french paradox. 

French people are known for eating a lot of fatty stuff but have a very low rate in Cardio vascular disease related deaths. Why? Because they drink a lot of red wine! Yes, red wine contains a big amount of polyphenols that are known for being very good for your heart!

Good to know before Christmas, right ? Anyway back to business... my UX course, yes!

Paper Prototypes, sketching.. the fun begins! Yes, one of the core tasks of being a UX Designer is to prototype and sketch. Doing wire frames of what the final product might actually look like will help find usability issue before actual coding beings and also can help doing some user testing to find some issue not identified before! 

I am building for Taskly, remember? My task management app needs some core features to be wire frames and tested and I have started doing this, this week. It is my absolute first time and so far the feedback has been good ! Yeah!

Have a look at some of the wire frames below :)

Found in Twitter

I am still working on the different tasks related to wireframing and soon will have a polished version uploaded to my behance profile. Yes I have a behance profile and I really invite you to have a look :)

For now that is all, to those who celebrate Christmas, a merry Christmas for all of you and see you next week!

Week 9 - Blank

Nothing to show about last week guys.

Haven't done any work on my course because I am really having a though time at work and feel a little bit sick too. Must all those people buying stuff the whole day.... anyway not an easy week for me and I am taking a break. Come back next week I will be starting with paper prototypes.

Putting this here in case there are some fans out there!

See you next week !

Week 8 - Black Friday Madness and Copywriting

A lot of distractions this week!

Christmas is almost here and it's time to spend my money, the one I have and the one I don't have just because coca cola invented a fat guy with a beard that gives gifts to everyone.
Not just that off course but this is no place for religion or beliefs.

Anyway, just kidding here... sorted my gifts, just a few for the ones who will be with me during the festivities. And that's it.

Obviously none of this nonsense:



Right, back to my course hmmmm.... yeah! SEO and Copywriting.

First of all english is not my mother tongue as the very few who, might have accidentally found this blog and actually read something, already understood, so it was a little bit hard for me to write something about Taskly that could later be used on the website to make people sign-up.
But here are some examples:

• Logo

On the logo: Having a face or some sort of animal as a logo might help potential users relate to the product with some sort of feeling. A dog can give the idea of loyalty, friendly, “always there”, buddy, companion, trustworthy.

• Tagline
• The app that works with you.

• Unique value proposition
• Taskly will help you get rid of distractions, be more productive and get things done.

• Sign up form plus written benefits/Call to action button.

Be in control of your day. Be productive. Be more.* 

*30 Day Full Feature Free Trial. No payment info needed.

Enter email address: ____________

Start Now

You guys get it right ? Copywriting is all about the text that will be visible on your website or application. It is used to educate the customer about the product you are selling, and off course, to help sell the product. This can mean, buying directly like in a e-commerce website or simply converting users by making them sign-up to your service. Converting users! very important.

The other part of the week was dedicated to SEO. For those who are not familiar with this term SEO means search engine optimisation. And what it really means is, the way a search engine "indexes" or saves our page into his results so it will show up when someone is looking for something that you are offering. You should think about this when writing your copy for the website because the text in it will have an impact on how your website ranks in these search results. SEO is a world and I am far from being an expert so do some research about this topic if you are interested. 

Resources like Google Keyword Planner are always a good place to start.

That is it for this week guys!

See you next week :)

Week 7 - IA for Information Architecture

Hello again,

At the end of last week I mentioned I would be working on Information Architecture. And indeed I am. Here is my first draft for Taskly's site map. I do appreciate some comments on this as it is the absolute first time I ever try doing a site map. I do hope I can learn more about Information Architecture in the coming days with "Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond" that should arrive in my mailbox very soon :)

The features for the first release are all there. I am one step closer from making Taskly a reality.

For this week I would like to focus (if I manage) on the Focus Feature I would like to implement in Taskly. I find it hard to focus and get stuff done without interruptions. I am not the only one in this era of smartphones and social media. We are hooked and always expecting something to happen.

The aim of the Focus mode in Taskly is to avoid a maximum of interruptions during a certain period of time. By blocking browser notifications or other notifications from other running apps, the user can have a predefined time window of focus. His own focus time. Once completed, the focus mode can advise the user to do something else, like check Facebook o show him what is next on his task list.- everything could be defined by the user himself.

The psychology behind this is that self-interruptions are better than external interruptions.
If the user decides that he wants to do something else rather than working on the project and then come back to it, the time needed to refocus will be smaller than if he got interrupted by an unexpected text message or popup on his computer. Focus mode could also block messages from other members of the project within Taskly.

I have selected two Ted Talks that mention the productivity issues people are facing nowadays.

The first one, from Tristan Harris, a design thinker and philosopher where one of the things he mentions is actually the difference between self and external interruptions. And much more... check it out!




The second video is from Jason Friend, the foudner of the Basecamp task management App.
Jason is controversial about work and distractions at work. In a somewhat accurate and funny talk, he gives very good examples on how to improve our focus times and times without interruptions at work.





That is if for this week! I do hope you enjoyed the talks, I do believe this is a the battle a lot of professionals out there are fighting and we need to find a way to take back our time by using it in a more productive manner.
Next week I will be talking about Copywriting, SEO and more.

See you then!

Week 6 - User Personas

Hey There!

Week 6 is now over and I have completed the 2 module. I now have my definitive user personas.
For those who are not familiar, a persona is a fictional character created to represent a potential user segment for a service or product. In this case for Taskly.

Meet John:

John Spencer - User Persona

Pretty cool right ? So now we know what someone like John is looking for in a task management app.
John is not really a person, he is just representing a group of people. I have made two additional personas and you can see them here.

This week, I saw a really cool TED Talk by Don Norman about User centered design. Don defends that Design should make users happy. This is a very laid back and funny video with great truth to it.
Have a look :)

Now that I know who I am building the app for, I dive into Information Architecture. IA, is the creation of a structure for a website, application, or other project, that allows us to understand where we are as users, and where the information we want is in relation to our position. 
Information Architecture results in the creation of site maps, hierarchies, categorisations, navigation, and metadata.

The beginning of module 3 is therefore the creation of the a site map. A site map is a graphical representation of the site information architecture. I am going to conduct some card sorting exercises to get my final architecture.

Come back next week to see the results!

Cya!

Week 5 - SMART

Hey again dear readers,

Last week was a complicated one. A lot going on personally, professionally.
I am actually getting a promotion at work. Not sure how I feel about that as I have been focusing on becoming a UX Designer and changing careers. Couldn't really say no as I am not sure of what is going to happen with the course anyway, if I am ever going to have a chance in UX or when it is going to happen ? Hope my new function still allows me to leave work on time to get some stuff done during the week :)

Personally... well let's leave that out!

Managed to deliver 2 tasks last week, the first one was about Business goals and Prioritization.
Very valuable lesson there, part of being a great designer is also being able to communicate clearly with clients.
Discussing a client's view on a product they want you to design and being able to communicate your thoughts clearly will be help you deliver a better product.

Here is a letter I would send to my client regarding Taskly. Remember Taskly?
The app I am designing as this course's final project. Well we are still at the early stages and defining the main features. The task was to reply to a letter from James, a fictional client, and identify the tasks that should or should not be developed in the early stages (MVP).

I have used the S.M.A.R.T methodology to do so. If you are not familair with this methodology browse the links at the end of this post where you will find more information on this topic.
Have a look at the letter I sent to James in reply to his needs using the S.M.A.R.T methodology.

SMART goals.

Part of being a UX Designer is also understand people and dealing with emotions.
Part of the early stages, I have to make assumptions on how working with Taskly will be like. Creating a user experience map allows to visualize the different stages of interaction with the app. Here is a screenshot of my first customer experience map:

Customer Experience Map

Well guys, that was last week's quick overview.
Hope you found this information interesting and if you are looking to know more about the topics mentioned above check out these links:

S.M.A.R.T
Do You Really Want a Journey Map? Or Is a Customer Experience Map Better?
All About Customer Journey Mapping

See you next week!

Week 4 - Interviews

Hi again!

Last week was all about conducting a survey and some interviews to get one step closer to defining Taskly's main features.

From what I learned so far I think most task management app don't really think about remote workers and freelancers who don't always look in a team. They might join teams on certain projects but can also spend a lot of time working on tasks on their own. I believe that they suffer the most trying to be productive and keep up with the deadlines.

I want Taskly to target freelancers and remote workers by giving them features that could help them achieve more in less time. The app will obviously have the main features of a task management but also a a time tracking feature that could boost productivity.

I have received pretty good feedback from my survey that gives me some confident in pursuing this angle. The survey was build with survey monkey.

Now, the fun part! Interviews! Using Skype I conducted a simple interview with 3 people.

The first one, André, an old friend from college who is now a TechLead at Dreamshapers, a Portuguese startup and also the the owner of the brewery Passarola.
André is working remotely for Dreamshapers and was honest enough to explain how he struggles from keeping away from social networks like Facebook.

João, the brand manager of Naturea Petfoods works with a small team of 3 and uses Trello to manage his tasks, just like André. The main reason is because it is free. No longer a freelancer he started his career like one and also struggled a lot to manage his time.

Catarina, Art Director at Ogilvy & Mather does not have this problem. She is very active on social networks as it is her source of inspiration and being part of a big structure at work really has no time for procrastination.

The full interview.

Next week I will start building my user personas! Stay tuned!

Week 3 - Good, Bad, Missing

Hello again!

For the rest of the course I will be working towards building a task management application.
This app will be called Taskly and at the moment that is pretty much it.
Why? Well I know have to do some research to find out what it should be about and what are the features that I should implement to make this app successful ! 
Makes sense for a UX course :)

The first step was to conduct a competitive analysis on 3 apps that re currently out there.
I have chose Asana, Basecamp and Hivedesk. The point of my study was to find information about them that could help me set the angle to the development of my app, Taskly.

So from marketing profile, core business, swot profile, content, UX/UI etc... I have managed to answer 3 important questions:

What is good about their service ?
What is bad about their service ?
What is missing from their service?

With an answer to these questions I am slowly working my angle for Taskly. The questions I have to answer now are:

What is Taskly's industry?
Who are the potential Taskly customers?
What needs do customers have and how can an app like Taskly fulfill those needs?

Get to know my competitive analysis in more detail!


As you have probably realised I am at the stage called user research. I need to know what problem am I solving and I need to know who is going to use my app. I am reading a book called "Just Enough Research" by Erika Hall. I do recommend this book if you want to know more about this subject.

The second task this week was about MVP. MVP stands for minimum viable product and is taken from the Lean UX methodology. I recommend reading "Lean UX" by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. 

I had to research MVP for apps that are currently on the market in was actually fun to see what their product looked like 10 years ago for basecamp for example. Unfortunately I could not use the actual app as it was 10 years ago but I could have a look at the websites and see how they looked 10 years ago. It is enough to have an idea of the features that were available back then. I used https://archive.org/web/. Give it  try it is pretty cool! 

I have made my study about MVP for Asana, Basecamp and Todoist availble for you.

Right! That was it for this week. Next week I am starting some surveys to validate my assumptions about which features Taskly should be built around. That and much more! see you next week :)

Week 2 - The Double Diamond

Hey there!

The second week is over and I have completed two additional tasks. 
The first module of the course is now done and I am ready to dive in into competitor analysis. This is the first step towards the final objective of the course which will be to bring an app called "Taskly" to life. More on that in the next few weeks!

This week I learned about design processes. 
Let's have a look at Lean Design and the Double Diamond processes.


Lean Design:

Ideate: Everything starts with an idea. It doesn’t really matter if the idea is particularly fleshed out. As long as you have an idea to experiment. It’s a go.

Prototype: From the idea, you then create a prototype. The quicker and cheaper your prototype is the better.

Test: From testing you will gain new insights and ideas which you can then implement in your prototype and test again.


The Double Diamond:

Discover: Start with user research. Map out the problem space as wide as possible to have as much data as possible.

Define: Define the problem. Now narrow down and go deep on the problem to define the scope fo the project. The problem should be something you can realistically solve with the resources you have.

Develop:

Now that you understand the problem, the problem space, and the scope, it’s time to develop.

Go wide and try as many possible directions or ideas.

Deliver: You chose one idea and develop it to the most tangible solution you can take to your client or users. Prototypes can help.

You can know more about these processes by reading "Lean UX" by Jeff Gothelf and for the double diamond process you can visit the Design Council website.

For moments I felt I was procrastinating... and really had to motivate myself to keep going with the course and avoid the thoughts "I still have the whole week...." , "I could do that over the weekend".
While at it I remembered a Tim Urban Ted Talk I saw not a long time ago about procrastination. This is a really funny and insightful talk and if you have 15 minutes to spare you should give it a go!

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Well, I did complete my tasks.


Remember the Yahoo Feature description of the previous tasks (you can review it here) ?
This week's first task was to try to improve the features that i didn't really like in the previous Yahoo feature analysis.
I had to sketch with pen and paper and try to recreate visually what the website looks like. Hope it is understandable :)

Yahoo improvement with Help Heuristic

You can read the whole exercise following this link.


The final task was to pick and examine 3 Project management web apps.

dapulse Task Management Analysis.

I have chosen Asana, dapulse and DeskHive and you can see the slides here.

Well hope you enjoyed and this week's post and feel free to contribute.
Your opinion is welcome!
See you next week!

Week 1 - The Beginning

Hey!

So my course at CareerFoundry.com started October 10th and I have now access to my tasks. As an estimate I should complete 3 tasks per week to complete the course on time, 23 weeks from now.
I am working full-time and haven't studied in a while so I need to get some "Feng Shui" going on here.

I am all set !

There was a lot of reading during this first week as I get myself acquainted to terms like, user surveys, user personas, content inventory, user flows, prototyping and AB Testing.
Concepts like usability are at the core of UX Design and "UCD" User centered Design is a hot topic.

I have also learned the different ways to research about the product you want to launch. These methods include questionnaires, interviews, usability testing, card sorting and participatory design.

To sum-up here what the workflow of UX with "UCD" in mind looks like:

1. Research, Analysis, and Context
2. Defining Concept and Specifications
3. Design and "Ideation"
4. Develop
5. Implement

You can always visit usability.gov for more information.


Without further ado! Here is an example of my first task. 
The objective of this exercise was to identify 5 products that I consider to be good an explain why. I have chosen one example but you can see the whole 5 by following this link.

iPhone

Design: it’s beautiful. Easy to use. Just works. Integration with other apple products (mac). Amount of applications.

For me, Apple just reinvented the phone and what a lot of people see as lack of evolution between releases I see as consistency and gradual implementation of new features that make the iPhone a very reliable and up to date purchase year after year. Also. the iOS is very stable and safe, compared to android for example, and can only be found in one phone. The amount of apps available - the app store is the biggest store out there -  plays a big role. With the iPhone, Apple not only has high customer satisfaction but also customer loyalty.

By not implementing too many changes version after version anyone can instantly turn on the phone and use it. It is simple. Simple does not mean lack of features but just enough features. The iPhone has educated its customers. Apple has made something that works but that is also beautiful. And this is important. Everything in the iPhone seems to have been designed to work but also to look better than any other phone out there. For me, with the iPhone, Apple has found the perfect match between UX and UI.

I feel I have something that is part of me. It is not only my phone it is a life companion. It gives me style, I don’t want to use a cover with it although I should. I feel I have the best phone on the market (even if it is not). I feel premium.

It was more challenging than expected to find a talk about the products I see as good products. When a product is good you don't "think" about it. This was the feedback from my mentor and it does make a lot of sense.

My second task was - and maybe you have guessed it - to find 5 products I don't like and explain why. I have chosen one example but you can see the whole 5 by following this link.

I don’t like vending machines because they mostly “serve” processed food. I like to eat healthy and fresh food.  Also, they look bulky and ugly. Although the process is simple they sometimes don’t work properly, your item stays stuck and you lose your money.I don’t know how you could make a vending machine better really. I just don’t like the concept of having food served by a machine.

Obviously not every place can have a kitchen with freshly made food. But then it should have no “food” at all. That would make people prepare themselves beforehand and bring some snacks to wherever they are going and not just have anything that is offered to them.

I am not against machines that sell beverages like coffee and water as these can look less bulky and customised with branding if they only serve one specific product.

Obviously once in awhile there is no other choice and I do have to use the vending machine and pray that the item will come out. When I do, I feel unhealthy, I feel I should have known better and should have brought that apple or sandwich from home. I feel I am wasting money.

The third task of the week was to combine both previous tasks. I had to select a product and explain what as good and what was bad about this product. I have chosen one example but you can see the whole 5 by following this link.

The Yahoo E-mail sign-in, sign-up process offers me two main options:1. I have an email address and therefore I can sign-in.2. I don’t have one and therefore I can sign-up.

What I like:
I can make my experience a little bit more convenient by staying signed in.I can see that I have options in case I can’t sing in.

What I don’t like:There is a security notice about something that happened. As I don’t have an account I am not sure I should create one now. Not sure it is worth the read as there are so many other email options out there.There are two steps to sign in. I have to enter my email press next and then type my password and press sign in. I cannot input both values on the same page.

I am going to create an account and give it a go. I clicked sign-up and the screen below appeared.

What I like:The “i’d rather use my own email address” notice seems a bit confusing in the beginning as I am trying to sign up for a yahoo email address but then I can login without one? In turns out Yahoo allows you to use another email you already have so you can use other services like Flickr, tumblr, finance etc…

What I don’t like:There is a “continue” button so I imagine I will have to do more things to create an account. It seems a little bit too much. Also, I don’t like the fact that I have to input my mobile phone number.

Conclusion:This is a no go for me.The security notice on the first page does not give me confidence in this feature.The lack of information on what is going to happen after each step and the unnecessary personal details that are requested make me not want to use this feature.

Right, hope you are awake and made it until here.

This was the end of the first week and a huge dive into UX.

Feel free to comment and ask questions! See you next week :)

Before it even started !

Hi there!

Before my course starts October 10th, I thought I should prepare for it and learn as much possible about everything.Yes this sounds vague but at this point I really am overwhelmed by the amount of topics and concepts UX design can refer to; I guess it is normal for an absolute beginner.

Once sure I wanted to do this course I started reading everything I could come across on the internet about UX and decided to divide UX Design into topics and then read the most relevant book or resource I could find on that topic.

Here they are:

UX Strategy - "Lean UX" by Jeff Gothelf.

User Research "Just Enough Research" by Erika Hall.

Information Architecture - "How to Make Sense of any Mess" by Abby Covert.

Interaction Design - "The Design of everyday things" by Don Norman.

Usability Testing - "Rocket Surgery Made Easy" by Steve Krug.

Visual Design - "The Non-Designers Design Book" by Robin Williams.

Coding - Learned HTML, CSS, JQuery, Bootstrap, Ruby on Rails and more at codecademy.com since January 2016. Check my website: http://www.simonw3.com.

SEO - "How to Get to the Top of Google" by Tim Kitchen and Google Adwords.

There are plenty of blogs and websites about UX that you can follow really just browse the web. Twitter is great to find and follow people who work and talk about UX.
I am going to mention one blog I like because actually it inspired me to name my blog: 52weeksofux.com by Joshua Porter.

Just remember, I am an absolute beginner and this might not be the best way start or the topics might not be exhaustive and/or the references might not be the best ones (sorry authors but who am I to know?). Anyway, I had to start somewhere. Success!

Week 1 starts October 10th! See you then :)