REFLECTIVE JOURNAL
Week 1: Orientation
It’s the module we’ve all been waiting for: UX Design! As someone with a design background but not a graphic or art-based background, I’m a little nervous about this one, but we’ll see how it goes! Kicking off with a brand new brief, I found myself needing more...
Week 1: Team
Jumping straight into our second module, we’re getting collaborative! Group work in an educational context is always chaotic, so my approach to this module will be different from the others. Above all else, I want to focus on a mature, collaborative environment where...
WEEK 12: Product Discussion
Staying true to my hobbies, I made a short video discussing the pros and cons of a digital product I use all the time. Below, you can find a tidied-up transcript.Hello, my name is Hannah and I am discussing D&D Beyond. This is a digital product designed to help...
Week 12: Extended Video
In an alternate universe if our submission was a 10 minute video instead, this would have been my script. It is largely the same but I go into more detail which sadly had to be cut due to time. and I avoided over scopingHello, my name is Hannah, and this is my...
Week 12: Capstone Behind the Scenes
“The mind can’t neatly follow office hours. One paragraph might be the work of a morning; an entire book of three slow years. We tend to miss this when we encounter the thoughts of others. Because they frequently sound so composed and can be digested in an effortless...
Week 12: Capstone Video
Hello, my name is Hannah, and this is my capstone video for the GDO710 module. This video is split into three parts: Development, Synthesis and Projection. Act 1 - Development Key skills and domains I have learned a lot throughout this module; some information I...
Week 12: Finale
Module Review The last 12 weeks have been tough, but I have loved every minute. By learning about such a wide variety of topics, I have a much broader view of the fundamentals of UX. How it’s not just designing some pretty websites but how the field is grounded in...
WEEK 11: Personal Branding
When there are so many great people out there fighting for the same dream job, employers still need to be able to pick the single person they want to hire. The way they make that decision is increasingly coming from the development of ‘personal branding’ (Richmond...
WEEK 10: User Persona
Meet Alice, the primary persona for my first design sprint challenge product, INKnowledge. A User Persona is an amalgamation of field research that presents user characteristics and goals. Personas are presented in an easily digestible format with images and...
WEEK 9: Communities of Practice
“Practice does not exist in the abstract. It exists because people are engaged in actions whose meanings they negotiate with one another.” (Wenger 1999: 74). Therefore, as creative practitioners, we join communities to aid our personal development to drive innovation....
Week 9: Ethnography Report
This week we were discussing social anthropology, specifically the topic of communities of practice. As a fun challenge we were tasked with researching and writing an ethnography report based on a community that aligns with our interests and aspirations for the...
WEEK 10: beFrank
Our extended horizontal slice presentation including our ideation process and all four user journeys.CREATIVITY was the theme for our second official design sprint. We were tasked with designing a solution that enhances creativity and self-expression in people’s daily...
WEEK 9: Second Design Sprint – Process
In this post, I will discuss our process and the team working aspect of the sprint. For an analysis of our artefact beFrank, please see WEEK 10: beFrank. Jumping into our second design sprint of the course, I decided to change things up by working in a group. I teamed...
WEEK 8: Research and Ethics
Research is an integral concept to humankind's progression and is one that we have employed in almost every facet of life (Nunnally and Farkas 2016). As applied to User Experience, research is integral to the process. It allows the UX team to systematically evaluate...
WEEK 7: Version Control
Version. Control. It is possibly in the top ten list of unsexist topics that I could discuss in my reflective journal, but it is nevertheless an important one and the one I am talking about today! Version control is how teams and individuals manage large websites,...
WEEK 6: Jam Interview
When I was introduced to the concept of game jams and design sprints I was unsure of their efficacy given such tight time constraints. But before cementing my opinion of them I decided to talk to Finlay MacDonald, a lecturer at UHI Moray, a university in Elgin,...
WEEK 6: First Design Sprint
And that’s it! My first ever Design Sprint: Complete. With the close of that intense period of work, I conducted the following retrospective. A retrospective is a part of the overall management framework within the Agile methodology. The aim of a retrospective is to...
WEEK 5: SMART Goals
We all have goals, but often, we never stick to them. However, frameworks exist that can help with that. The SMART acronym provides a structure that allows us to create actionable aims; as a methodology, it has been around in one shape or form for decades (Lawlor...
WEEK 5: Reflective Domains
Reflective writing is not a new practice for me, and I have been revelling in the opportunity to flex those muscles over the last few weeks. With week five's learning material, however, we began learning about the theory behind the practice. I won't dive into the...
WEEK 5: Typography
Over Christmas, I read a book on typography. As a field, it is not something I ever thought about beyond choosing French Script MT for every school essay and avoiding Comic Sans at all costs. Knowing I would be joining the UX Design MA with Falmouth, I picked up Just...
WEEK 4: Failure
In week 4, we are entering the first of our Sprint sessions. As this will be my first official Sprint, I will do it alone to learn the ropes of this new format. In preparation, we were asked to define what we would like to achieve by the end of the Sprint, a...
WEEK 3: Horizon Forbidden West
After a quick introduction to the world of prototyping and rapid ideation, our task this week was to unpack the design theory behind an established product by reverse engineering it. I picked the skills menu from the recently released game Horizon Forbidden West for...
WEEK 2: TEE
Ultimately, what I want to get out of this MA is the potential for a new future. Just a small goal! To that end, I have read many articles, how-tos and opinion pieces about being as attractive as possible to hiring managers. They all kept saying the same thing, “what...
WEEK 2: Creative Remix / Nancy
To get our creative juices flowing, we were tasked this week with ‘remediating’ a piece of artwork and turning it into something new! I’ll admit, I cheated on this one. I read the challenge brief and immediately knew what I wanted to do. Found poetry, a technique...
WEEK 2: Cognitive Psychology
Creativity is a thorny issue as many people see themselves as inherently not creative. As we are working on a UX design course, this was precisely the topic we covered this week; what is creativity, and how can we strengthen our creative muscles? Langley and Jones...
WEEK 1: Agility
For our first week of study, we were introduced to the world of agile methodologies. Agile as a working method was developed as a reaction to the cumbersome and documentation heavy practices of the past (Zelkowitz 2004). Many people who work agilely will give a...
WEEK 1: Custom Avatar
As this MA is an online course, we students will have to work harder than those on a typical university course to gain the same social benefits. Working from home, we must be active with our social intentions. Reflecting the difficulty of creating and maintaining...
WEEK 1: My Next Adventure
So. Here we are. This post marks the beginning of my MA in User Experience Design with Falmouth University. I ended up peering through the door of UX when I realised that a career in architecture wasn’t right for me. The more I researched the industry, the further I...