Self Assessment 1:
Technical Skills: So far, this internship has given me the opportunity to learn brand new skills that apply my previous knowledge. I have learned how to wireframe pages and make better sitemaps to accommodate the user’s preference. I’ve also learned how to gather research and apply that towards creating Personas to aid empathizing with a target group for which we are designing for.
Tools: In learning these technical skills, I also came to understand the tools we used to apply those skills. Design platforms like Mural and Basalmiq were a slight challenge to feel comfortable with, but after playing around with the interface and creating the personas or wireframes, I felt comfortable and confident in using it more. We’ve also begun to use Asana as a management tool for tasks. While I have not had much time to get a feel for it, I have seen the layout and believe I will be able to get used to it as it is similar to other management tools I have used in the past.
Soft Skills: Through conducting the interviews, I learned how to improve my interpersonal skills with others by asking the interview questions and gathering information from our stakeholder genres. I’ve also gained valuable insight into collaborating within a team on projects especially regarding communication about tasks and thoughts. The tasks and learning aspect have helped me gain a better grasp of managing my own time with the work I have as I collaborate. Creating Personas was a huge help in gaining that knowledge and ability to empathize with individuals or target groups one may not necessarily know that well.
3 Highlights:
Since the beginning of the internship, I have conducted many interviews which were a new experience for me. For my first time, I was able to conduct numerous interviews and gather the information that I could apply to the personas we created later on.
I also learned how to create an empathy map using the information we gathered from the interviews.
Another highlight was designing the low fidelity prototypes and sitemaps that implemented the design principles we learned earlier on.
List of Meetings: 6/1-6/5 & 6/8-6/9 & 6/11-6/12 & 6/15-6/16 (All meetings) + Extra interview example meeting 6/12
In the upcoming week, I would like to complete the wireframe for the additional pages with my task group and collaborate with the group creating the homepage wireframe to ensure similarity and consistency with certain aspects. I would like to maintain the workflow and productivity and even improve it, if possible.
Tasks Done:
First, I created an empathy map of a chosen stakeholder: Undergrad/ High school student. Initially, I was unsure about the mindset and how to be general to empathize with the all students, but after using the links and examples provided, I was able to create one to the best of my ability.
I also conducted numerous interviews after creating a list of questions to gather information from different types of stakeholders, mostly students.
I then used the information from the interviews to re-evaluate my empathy map and to create a stakeholder map.
The interview information also helped when I created the personas with my team. Initially, the information I had included was too general but after meeting with our leads, I learned how we could improve our personas to be easier to empathize with for the project. We remade the persona as a team using the new knowledge we had and I also felt that it was easier to understand the direction that a person was supposed to take.
Following this line of tasks, I created a simple sitemap and wireframe of the main site pages using Basalmiq that embodied the main elements that we were looking to improve. It was difficult initially to implement certain design elements, but after revisiting some information pages on Gestalts principles provided earlier on, I was able to complete my wireframe with ease.