Harshinir - UX & UI Pathway

8/03: Interviews, Affinity Mapping

Things Learned:

Technical areas:

  • Affinity mapping with interviewees’ insights and pain points
  • Qualitative research methods(interviewing)

Soft Skills:

  • Remote collaboration
  • Teamwork
  • Stakeholder management
  • Virtual Communication

Tools:

  • Affinity mapping via Miro
  • Remote interviewing through Google Hangouts

3 Achievement highlights:

  • Collected user insights and organized data in a useful manner through affinity mapping
  • Individually conducted 3 semi-structured user interviews
  • Communicated with stakeholders concerning expectations for the resume feature and the direction of the project

Meetings attended:

Team 3 Meeting 9

Team 3 Meeting 10

Team 3 Meeting 11

3 hours of meetings with IST/PST sub-group

2 hours of interviewing(3 sessions)

1/2 hour meeting with Team leads and Pathway lead

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Finish ideating on solutions to user pain points
  • Start and finish sketching solutions that arose during brainstorming
  • Start working on the Final presentation

Task: User Interviews

Interviewed three individuals and led them through a usability testing session of the 1-Click Resume prototype. Interviewees consisted of two STEM-Away mentor leads and one Non-STEM-Away college student. Collected insights about student experiences with resumes and usability of the current prototype.

Task: Affinity Mapping

Amassed all user insights and pain points onto a team Miro board. Organized insights by category and similar themes in collaboration with teammates.

Hurdles: Communication with teammates floundered slightly during the interviewing process, as it was individual work. We ended up having to meet a few more times to get on the same page to start the affinity mapping process. In order to make up for the loss of time, we were advised to skip making personas to stay on track with the timeline of the project.

PDF of Affinity Diagram // UX T3 indian and pacific (4).pdf (269.5 KB)

8/11 - 8/18:

Things Learned:

Technical areas:

  • Created sketches of solutions to user pain-points and of stakeholder expectations
  • Created a Low-Fi prototype of the 1-Click Resume®
  • Evaluated design solutions through an Impact-Feasibility Matrix
  • Created Project Presentation
  • Created Low-Fidelity representations of unique features

Soft Skills:

  • Remote collaboration and Teamwork
  • Time Management
  • Communication
  • Oral Presentation
  • Brainstorming

Tools:

  • Creating the Impact-Feasibility matrix and brainstorming solutions through Miro
  • Creating iterations of prototype on Figma
  • Creating Presentation slides through Google Slides

3 Achievement highlights:

  • Creating an Impact-Feasibility matrix
  • Brainstorming and ideating on solutions to user pain-points
  • Completing a low-fidelity prototype of our solutions

Meetings Attended:

Team 3 Meeting 12

Team 3 Meeting 13

Team 3 Meeting 14

Team 3 Meeting 15

12 hours of subgroup team meetings

3 hours of individual work

Goals for the upcoming week:

  • Get more feedback on our prototype to make improvements for the Final presentation
  • Continue improving our presentation to effectively communicate our design process and product
  • Make our prototype clickable and scrollable

Task: Sketching

Drew sketches of the public and private mode of the resume, specifically how it would appear to an outside viewer and where the user could choose who could view their resume. Also drew sketches of the resume help page and FAQ page.

Task: Evaluating solutions

We mapped our solutions onto an Impact-Feasibility matrix to help us determine which solutions had the highest value and impact on the user with the lowest effort from the organization. This helped us narrow down solutions to move forward with.

Task: Prototyping

Created low fidelity prototypes of the privacy mode, employment status tags, pop-ups with guidance for filling out the resume, resume help and FAQ pages, and the pre-populated drop-down menu through Figma.

Task: Presentation slides

We worked on creating our final presentation to effectively communicate and present the problems we faced, our research process, findings from the usability testing, our brainstorming/ideation process, our solution proposal, and our prototypes.

Hurdles: We had to allot a significant amount of time to complete these tasks to stay on track with the project’s timeline. We met more frequently and for longer periods of time. We also decided to complete some tasks individually to ensure that our meetings were efficient and productive.

8/18 - 8/25: Prototyping, Presentation

Things Learned:

Technical areas:

  • Created mid to high fidelity versions of our prototypes
  • Created a stakeholder map
  • Created an empathy map

Soft Skills:

  • Remote collaboration and Teamwork
  • Time Management
  • Oral Presentation
  • Virtual Presentation
  • Stakeholder communication

Tools:

  • Created the empathy map through Miro
  • Created the stakeholder map through Google art
  • Continued editing our prototypes through Figma
  • Continued editing presentation through Google slides

3 achievement highlights:

  • Created an empathy map and stakeholder map
  • Gave multiple virtual presentations to stakeholders
  • Finished the prototypes

Meetings Attended:

IST/PST presentation to Mentor Leads - 1hr

UX Team 3 Meeting 16: Presentation to Pathway Leads

UX Team 3 Final Presentations

11 hours of IST/PST sub-group meetings

1 hour of individual work

Goals for the Upcoming Week:

  • Give a great final presentation of our work!
  • Finish self-assessments

Task: Empathy Map and Stakeholder Map

We added an empathy map and stakeholder map to our presentation that we had created at the beginning of the project and tailored it to include more insights specific to the 1-Click Resume®. In the stakeholder map, we organized stakeholders by their interest in the project and their role in the organization. In the empathy map, we drew upon our own first-time experiences with the resume feature to address some of the potential issues users may be having with the 1-Click Resume®.

Task: Prototyping

We created mid to high fidelity versions of our prototyping by incorporating the design aesthetic and themes from the STEM-Away platform. This ensured that our prototypes could be easily integrated into the current version of the website.

Task: Presentation

We gave two presentations to our mentor leads and Pathway leads, where we received feedback on our presentation and prototypes. We incorporated their suggestions, such as adding a preliminary analysis which included a stakeholder map and an empathy map, and small edits to elaborate on our research and design decisions before our final presentation to the CEO, Debaleena Das.

Hurdles: Given the fast-paced timeline of the project and our limited design experience, we were not able to refine and perfect the visual aspect of our design suggestions. We focused heavily on the functionality and justification of each design suggestion and refining the information hierarchy in categories of the resume prototype that would display a user’s engagement with the STEM-Away platform, i.e. technical skills, soft skills, and achievements.