Phew…. Made it… This has felt like a long, tough module. Keeping up with weekly content, writing blog posts, learning new concepts and progressing my project adequately has been a struggle. Every week felt like a race to the finish line to produce content without having any chance to truly assess what I was doing. I feel well and truly exhausted. But simultaneously, I feel galvanised at the knowledge I am slowly building up. With each step in this course, I feel more and more strongly that UX is a great direction for me and my career.
However, I can’t help but wonder about the process of a real UX project in a professional setting. Learning and applying theories to my uni work is great fun, but how is it actually practised in real projects? I’d love to have a glimpse into the inner workings of an industry setting to compare and contrast the differences.
Overall, I am pleased with my performance throughout the module given the constraints, despite missing my personal goals. I learned a lot about my own psychology and how to hack my brain when I’m having difficulties. As my case study document shows, pen and paper have been a great help. As this is a distance course, I tried my best to engage with peers in the forums and privately to share my work to receive feedback. But there is something different about giving feedback online versus in person that stops the flow of discussion.
Having completed this module as my last before the final major project, I am even more pleased with my progression in the previous modules. During the group work and research modules, I still knew nothing about UX and the processes that make the profession. Progressing through those modules was a whirlwind of I-have-no-clue-but-I’m-doing-something, but now the content in the design module has tied everything together. Because the world of UX is still throwing so many new things at me, I have many skills that I’m dying to improve. I want to read everything, learn everything, practice everything right now! I think this journal hasn’t helped the feeling that I SHOULD be improving every single skill simultaneously. But considering that time is finite, learning everything there is to know about UX, Matrix-style, is not feasible (Clear 2016).
Instead, I will commit to expanding my knowledge and expertise on one area of UX per project. I will also implement a personal retrospective after each project from now on that is more specific than the reflections in this journal. I will play with the format of this, initially, I will use Miro templates for team retrospectives for inspiration but I will test what works best.
I’d love to close out this journal entry with an insightful few words, but instead, all I’ll say is this: I need a holiday.
References
CLEAR, James. 2016. ‘The Scientific Argument for Mastering One Thing at a Time’. James Clear [online]. Available at: https://jamesclear.com/master-one-thing [accessed 18 Apr 2024].
German vocabulary of the week
Holiday – Ferien