Week 2 Updates: #Designerfromscratch

 16-05-2019 

Time spent:  3h 18m

So, here are the updates for today.

👉🏾 Did two user interviews today. Thanks, Saurabh Da and Chinmay for the help.

👉🏾 Also documented the keynotes in a structured manner from the interviews.

The form has garnered 25 responses so far and I think I am good to go to the next step which is defining the problem.

User research is a tiresome process and since I am doing it for the first time, I learned quite a few stuff.

One key thing that I learned is that while doing any user research or survey, please have a clear objective or goal in mind that what do you want to achieve from the user research.

Then only you will be able to get meaningful insights from the interview.

Rest, The next lesson of IDF will unlock today. So, the action items are:

1. Going through the lessons of IDF. [The lesson 3 is not unlocked so far]
2. Defining the problem statement based on the insights from the survey and user interviews.

This is the beginning of week 2. Thank you for following along.

 17-05-2019 

Time Spent: 0h 0m

The least productive day of the entire sprint so far.

Didn’t work at all due to some personal life problem. I tried concentrating but couldn’t.

The bigger picture is that it will take some time to sort that thing up and I have to make my way around it. Sort of balancing it all kind of stuff.

But in the end, it all counts to excuses. So, yeah, that was it for yesterday.

But now though, here is the plan:

1. IDF course lesson 3 is unlocked. So, will be going through that.
2. Working on my portfolio site. (This mistake that I made is not to build my portfolio but not anymore)
3. Checking if I further need some more user insights and then moving on to the next stage of design thinking.

Note to self – It will always happen that things don’t go as planned and you have to work around it to stick to your goal.

 18;-05-2019 

Time spent on course:  1h 16m

Lessons: Till lesson 3.3

So, I started with lesson 3 and completed to 3.3 chapters.

Takeaway:

So, the activities that can be employed in the empathize phase are:

1. What, How and Why?
2. Conducting user interviews.
3. Journey maps
4. Bodystorming
5. Photo and video journaling.

As of now, I am doing user interviews only. Will try to get my hands on all of these above.

I have also started working on my portfolio site, Shubhambhatt.com.

Yeah, the action items for today are:

1. Completing the remaining lessons.
2. Making the portfolio site mobile responsive.

See you tomorrow.

 19-05-2019 

Time spent on course:  2h 38m

Lessons: Lesson 3 complete

So, this lesson has an assignment and that is to make a fitness-related app. Now, I am in a kind of dilemma that what should I do, because I am halfway through the E-learning platform app and now this.

And the thing is that this project will be carried over to other lessons as well, So, I think I should finish this first and then take that E-learning one later.

Yeah, that should be the way to go about it.

Also, coming to the personal portfolio part, I learned about CSS grids yesterday from freecodecamp and the mobile responsive website will come out in a day or so.

And the action items for today are:

1. Work on the research for the fitness app.
2. Mobile responsiveness and CSS grid module completion of freecodecamp.

That’s pretty much it for the day. See ya tomorrow.

 20-05-2019 

Time spent:  1h 20m + 30m (Grid module)

So, I completed the interview script and the survey form that needs to be floated around.

One important thing that I learned during the exercise is that the objective needs to be well defined before taking any interview as to have a clear idea of what you want to extract from the participant.

And in the four interviews that I have done so far, that objective part was missing and that’s the major learning from this lesson.

Also, completed the grid system module of freecodecamp but couldn’t finish the mobile responsiveness task of the portfolio website. That’s on top of the list of action items for today.

Action Items:

1. Working on the portfolio site design and development.
2. If time permits, taking interview of at least one person for the fitness app design assignment.

Yeah, that’s it. See you tomorrow.

 21-05-2019 

Time Spent: Must be some 4-5 hours (Forgot to keep track of time)

I was working on the design & development of my portfolio site and it’s kind of done for now.

I also forgot to keep the track of time but it must be somewhere around 4-5 hours approx.

As of writing this, I have spent the first half of the day(22/05/2019) on the portfolio website as well.

The objective of the portfolio website is to aggregate my work in one single place. Though most of the links will take you away from the website but the key idea is to have a central place for my works.

If you ask me,

Is the design good? I would say, not yet there.

Is there any scope of improvement? Absolutely yes.

Like any other product, this website will be going through a lot of iterations until the time it could not be polished any further.

Hence, I am putting it up here for you to tell me what improvements can be done.

Over to you guys.

Thank you.

 22-05-2019 

Time Spent: No track of time

Okay, so first thing, week 2 has officially ended. And it’s been 14 days I am into it.

First thing I would want to tell you that, it’s hard.

Last two days, I’ve been completely off-track.

I haven’t proceeded further with the fitness app assignment and the E-learning one is still on hold.

Just for a quick summary, here is what I have done in the past two weeks.

👉 Made my portfolio site. (Mind you, I have been trying to do this from very long)

👉 Learned the nitty gritty of User Research. Took 4 user interviews and learned what I have been doing wrong there.

👉 Got the clarity that product design is something I like doing. Strategizing, brainstorming and research is something I want to build my career on.

Yeah, this is it.

Note to self 👉 Hang on there.

See you tomorrow.