Mapping the industry
Our first project as UX Design students at Hyper Island
After going through the foundation weeks with all the other new students from Hyper Island, our UX Design course finally started. And just like in the foundation module, we were divided into groups, we received a briefing and we already had a project to deliver in a few days.
In other words, there is no time to waste. In all course modules, there will be a project that will ask us for a few things like research, ideation, prototyping and delivery. And why not, right? After all, it’s a UX Design course.
What was the main goal?
Basically, the first module of the course was aimed at allowing us students to learn a little more about what a UX Designer does and how this profession is changing over the years.
We were exposed to the concepts of specialist, generalist and the various developments and titles that the profession has been receiving in the market, how and why this has all been happening.
The group project
What? Why? Who?
We received the briefing and were divided into groups. My team consisted of 6 people in total and was responsible for researching the role of the UX/UI Designer . Our challenge was to prepare a deliverable advertising this profession, highlighting qualities, academic and technological skills, among other aspects. Our challenge was to attract our classmates to invest in this role in the future.
When? Where?
Our deadline was relatively short for research, ideation, prototyping and delivery on September 8th. In addition to the deliverable. We also had to prepare and share a flyer with the advertisement of our final product a few days before, inviting colleagues to the day of the presentation.
The work was initially carried out in a hybrid regime (half of our team was still moving to Karlskrona during this period), becoming 100% face-to-face in the last few days close to the deadline
How?
Like good hyper students we started the work by elaborating the Project Point of Departure or POD which is basically a document that structures how the group will work. In the POD we define the structure, direction, purpose and desired outcome. We also write how the work dynamics will be, for example, how we will communicate, through which channels, which are the guidelines for decision making, what we understand as success, failure and many other aspects. It seems like a lot, but it’s actually not a time-consuming thing to do and it was a very important step in structuring this group.
With the POD ready, we moved on to the Desk Research stage on the role we were given: UX/UI Design.
I suggested that we made a CAD Matrix (Certainties, Assumptions and Doubts) to structure the information after this first research on the topic. As the next step was to interview people who work in the industry, this step would be interesting so that we could structure the questions for these interviews.
- The interviews
With the questions defined, we contacted several people through LinkedIn and using our personal network of contacts.
We were very surprised by the number of people who responded and were willing to participate in the interview. most did not even know us and made themselves available. It was something we did not expect and we were very happy. I can say without a doubt that we were privileged in this respect. We were able to hear stories and experiences from Designers with diverse backgrounds who even shared tips and advice for us, juniors.
Here are a few excerpts that I thought were important to highlight:
- Ideation and Prototyping
And so? How to put this pile of information together and create a deliverable? Maybe through Slides? Video-slides presentation? Nah…we came to the conclusion that we wanted to make a short video of up to 4 minutes instead of a slideshow.
I confess that this alternative took me completely out of my comfort zone. But hey, we’re at hyper for that so I surrendered to the process.
Time to do a roadmap: we had to structure a script, choose the most relevant information, adopt a concept for the video, and even a mini storyboard was made for the first scene. It wasn’t until we started filming that things unfolded with ease.
Rafael had the idea and execution for the flyer. Skander was elected to be in charge of filming since he had previous experience with videomaking. And all of us, Josefin, Me, Linda, Rafael, would be on screen playing a role, except for Skander. The main character was played by Sebastian.
The best thing out of this, I must say, we had a lot of fun throughout the process, especially during filming and editing.
With the editing done, we organized the interviews in our own templates and asked for the consent of the interviewees to disclose this material to our classmates. This was an important step as we were not able to use all the information we’ve got in our deliverable (#sharingiscaring)
The Result
Our video was inspired by television comedy sitcoms such as the office. We meant to disclose to our classmates all our findings in the format of a little comedy/informative video.
Here is a sneak peek of the video:
And our flyer:
Wait! It doesn’t stop there
At the end of each project, we have a closing session, when we can discuss together the process followed, results obtained, as well as sharing appreciation and feedback with each other.
We felt very happy with our prototype and the end result. We were also able to get valuable feedback from our classmates by the end of the presentations which helped us understand where we could have done better.
In summary, we finished this first module with a great sense of accomplishment, more knowledge about the industry we are about to enter and more confident about the future.
A Shout out to my teammates who collaborated in a unique way on this task: Rafael, Josefin, Linda, Sebastian and Skander!
