UX Design

UX Design // Final Project

Ibrahim Fazal Ahmad / 0337423

Week 1 - Week 14

Information Design / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylors University 

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INSTRUCTIONS

Week 1: For our first week, Mr Asrizal had just given a briefing on how this module is going to be conducted. I had been looking through our seniors work and I realised how different this was going to be, as we would be collaborating with industry professioinals. This was definitely more pressure, along with the fact I am not the best at UI/UX. Also the fact it is group work is definitely daunting.

Week 2: For this week we had another short lecture, along with a request from Mr Asrizal to research the Unfold and Artleap apps as we were going to be meeting with the Pixlr team next week.

Week 3: Now we have actually begun to work with Pixlr for this class. We were separated into four groups of six. Mine being:

• Fazal
• Yumnu
• Sean
• Jing Wen
• Hammam
• Tresha

I ended up being leader for this group, though not super confident in this subject. As an entertainment design student I am not very familiar with the work of this class so it is definitely a little bit confusing. We were given the topic of Pixlr Stories. This app actually hasn't been released yet, so we don't have a way of comparing it directly yet. I discussed with my members and we decided to do a competitive comparison board on different apps we all had found relating to story making. 

I chose "Storyluxe: Templates & Filters". We just broke down the good, bad, and missing features from each of our own individual applications. After which we created a board comparing all of the features on our apps. We also included some screenshots from our apps to show the features better. 

Week 5: 

Next we created a User Journey Map for each of our apps using a template created by Yumnu. Detailing the pain points, improvements, etc. 

We also worked on different personas we felt would be appropriate for the app. We created them based on a few interviews and our competitive analysis. 

Figure 1: StoryLuxe Competitive Analysis on Miro

Figure 1.1: User Experience Research Presentation

We were told we did a good job overall but just had a few things missing that we can add to our presentation before the submission such as including Instagram and Tiktok in the competitive comparisons.

Week 7: Now that we've done some basic research on competitors. We were expecting to get a prototype of Pixlr Stories but unfortunately couldn't due to some reasons with Apple. This resulted in us having to wait nearly the full two weeks before our presentation for the app. We luckily got it on Monday, two days before our presentation. We conducted a few user tests with the minimal time we had and also included some research we had done on the content and subscriptions of the apps from the competitive comparison. We summarised our findings into a simple manner and proposed a few actions to fix issues. 

Figure 1.2: User Testing Presentation

The Pixlr team was very happy with our presentation, though we were initially very unsure with the amount of information we had collected. Luckily they were happy and we could move onto creating our prototypes as they had no complaints or changes to be made with our current presentation deck. 

Week 8: Independant Learning Week

Week 9 - Week 10: During this week we discussed on how to approach our final presentation. Though I am leader, Yumnu had taken charge during this final stretch. She is very familiar with creating prototypes and UX design/UI design so I took a step back to let her direct us. We collected a few more user testing of the Pixlr Stories app. After which the problems were identified and Yumnu created a new prototype of the Stories app using Adobe XD. Here is the link: https://xd.adobe.com/view/fee5c714-b2d8-44c8-8c3d-a5e37275e898-abb6/

We also proposed a few changes that could be made or added, such as adding gestures and possibly adding a tutorial due to the complexity of the stories app. Here is our final presentation:

Figure 1.3: Final Presentation

Pixlr was very happy with out final presentation. However, it seemed that we still had a bit of time left in this class and we were asked to create one last thing. Being an example of the tutorial and how it would function. 

Week 12: For this part, Jing Wen and I had taken the lead and created a tutorial using Adobe Illustrator and screenshots from in the Pixlr Stories app. Shown below is the tutorial created by myself, the rest of which are available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vk5NuWMgNhz7zKXsSVAtTI6aLjCAEoSm?usp=sharing 

Figure 1.4: Tutorial Prototype

Figure 1.5: Tutorial Prototype

REFLECTION:

This subject was definitely... an adventure to say the least! I can't exactly lie and say I enjoyed every moment of this. Quite the opposite, I was so close to even giving up and dropping this module and moving it into another semester. Luckily, I didn't! My group mates were all amazing and I am very grateful to have such a cooperative and proactive group. I didn't feel confident as leader for a lot of this project because I am simply not experienced in this field, so having Yumnu by my side was lifesaving. As much as I complained about this class, I definitely learned a lot from class. Mostly relating to how to present to clients and workflow. Keeping our information short and simple to understand was what I retained the best. I also learned the importance of teamwork and how low morale can easily affect us all. At times, my whole group and I were struggling so much with this class, but I am glad to be at the finish line! And I am even more glad I chose entertainment design, and not new media because I am seriously not cut out for this type of work. Though I am glad it has broadened my understanding of design and skillsets for the future.