UX Design Portfolio

ABOUT ME

I am a self-taught User Experience Designer. In order to find a fulfilling career, I spent a year of my life trying my hand at different things and discovered my passion for UX Design. I took online courses, read books and met industry experts to learn and grow my skill set. I even worked on some projects, implementing the end to end design process, and learned the tools along the way.

I love UX design so much because of the challenges I get to work on as a designer. Helping people, researching user and competition, defining the right problem, understanding human psychology, strategizing and thinking critically, being creative: I get to wear all the different hats and I enjoy every bit.

Currently, I am reading It’s Our Research by Tomer Sharon. I have also applied for Interdisciplinary Studies in Human-Centred Design program at Algonquin College in order to build my expertise in design.

MY PROJECTS

Spark Path Challenge Cards

I participated in the Random Hacks of Kindness in April 2019 where five different project pitches were delivered. I chose SparkPath and, along with other designers and developers, helped create a fully functional prototype for the client.

PROJECT GOAL

Create a digital version of SparkPath challenge cards.

CHALLENGES

1. Understand the physical card sorting process and its goal.
2. Work with a new team; build a rapport with team members.
3. The short time available for the project; one and a half-day to design and develop.
4. No time for user research, access only to client influenced research.

PROCESS

We came together for a group meeting to understand the card sorting process, client goals and how this challenge fits the overall vision of the company. Given the time constraints, a decision was made to follow the agile methodology where the developers started creating the framework of the application from the beginning. I worked with another researcher to interview the client and gather user information, trying to understand their emotions and approach when they performed card sort. Then we created low-fidelity prototypes which were fed to other designers who created high-fidelity designs and gave it to the developers. A true agile approach was followed and everyone kept working; whatever was created was fed to the next person in the chain to work on. By the end of the hackathon, we had a fully functional prototype that was presented to the audience and feedback was gathered. The client was extremely satisfied with the digital challenge cards prototype.

Few members of the team met after the hackathon with the client to improve the prototype. I suggested changes to the design from the feedback gathered and redesigned the interface.

FINAL DESIGN

The final prototype of the digital challenge cards is ready! Check it out and provide feedback.

HIGHLIGHTS

1. Working with other designers for the first time, I learned to collaborate with them while focusing on the client’s goal.
2. I learned how to successfully follow an agile approach to design and development.
3. I got the opportunity to present designs to the development team and be the liaison between the two.
4. I presented the prototype to the client, audience and other teams along with my teammates.
5. I worked remotely to implement the changes to design, learning to collaborate on a project with a remote team.

WHAT WAS MISSED?

1. We designed and developed with a mobile-first approach, hence the design is not optimal for bigger screens.
2. There was no proper documentation at any step thus changes were not documented and there were a few differences in the designed and developed features.

UX Design Projects

In order to learn the design tools and improve my understanding of the design principles, I did some weekly design challenges. The 3 projects I worked on were:

1. Bring Me Home: A pet adoption website that helps one find a pet that matches their lifestyle.
2. Airbnb Group: A feature on Airbnb, allowing a group of friends to plan and book their mutual vacation.
3. Remember Me: Help an educator learn student names, with the goal of shortening the time needed to reach complete unaided accuracy.

PROJECT GOALS

Learn and implement the end-to-end user experience design process with the aim to create three fully functional prototypes.

CHALLENGES

1. No mentorship was available so didn’t know if my approach was right.
2. Followed learn as you go approach since I did not know any methods or tools in the beginning.
3. Just studied a basic UX design course, no deep knowledge of design principles.
4. Solo projects, no team involved.

PROCESS

I followed the Discover, Define, Design, Test and Release process. Each step involved the following:

1. Discover: Understand the users, their needs and pain-points; create user personas.
2. Define: Specify scope, goal, requirements; brainstorm ideas; prioritize requirements.
3. Design: Create user journeys, sitemaps, wireframes, and low and high-fidelity prototypes.
4. Test: Create an instruction document; gather feedback.
5. Release: Make changes and finalize the prototype.

FINAL DESIGNS

1. Bring Me Home

2. Airbnb Group

3. Remember Me

I have a detailed report of my complete UX Design Portfolio for these three projects.

HIGHLIGHTS

1. Created detailed and realistic personas.
2. User journeys and sitemaps were well thought and thorough.
3. Learned AdobeXD, Sketch App and InVision Studio.
4. Created interactive prototypes.
5. Received positive feedback on my designs (mostly).
6. Learned and implemented the end-to-end design process.

WHAT WAS MISSED?

1. No efforts were put into problem discovery as the challenges were pre-defined.
2. The solutions were influenced by my opinion of what the end-user would be.
3. Not enough research was conducted on the end-user and the competition.
4. A waterfall approach to design was followed and feedback was gathered at the last step.
5. The UI of projects could be better with simpler UI elements.