Week 12: Reflection week

UXD720

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Reflecting on the last 12 weeks, I felt a positive achievement as I accomplished a UX project from start to finish. I have learned many skills and developed my practice which I will take away and apply in real-world scenarios.

My key takeaways from the project are:

• Conducting usability tests throughout the design and development process has been valuable as it revealed issues that have improved my learning and steered me away from my assumptions.

• Research is essential at the start of the project to understand the topics before developing the product.

• Understanding that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines need to be considered when designing your prototype. Although it is not possible to design for all, it is essential to consider these aspects to increase accessibility and usability for users.

• Implementing colour accordingly in the design and using the 60-30-10 approach can be great for beginners. Using colours can evoke specific emotions to support your app’s intentions (Bodrogi 2003: 131).

SMART goals

I have also reflected on my SMART goals and believe I have achieved them well. In particular, goals 1 and 2 involved experimenting with tools such as Balsamiq and Figma. I wanted to learn new tools and advance my learning in the software to become proficient and create advanced prototypes. I will take the learnings and experience and apply them in my UX Designer career.

I accomplished goal 3 well, but I do believe I could have done more to involve my users in the development process. Next time, I will keep this in mind when developing a product.

Goals 4 and 5 are working in progress. Obtaining real industry experience has been one of my objectives for this year. I managed to speak to my employer regarding working with UX within my company, and I am pleased that they were on board and happy to help me gain industry experience. Moreover, I will be using the case study to build my portfolio after this module. These are my short-term goals, and I hope to achieve them in the next few months.

Future work

One of my assumptions was being able to design all the features, but this was not possible due to the time limit. Moreover, I’ve had to balance a full-time job that can be stressful. I tried to put a lot of effort and commitment into my project to improve my learning and develop my skills to become a UX Designer.

Due to time constraints, I did not show other innovative user journeys, such as intermittent fasting or the Dukan diet. This would reveal different goals and experiences compared to the regular diet.

I did not improve all the app’s features, such as the meal plan, because I wanted to focus on designing new functionality such as the heart rate and the augmented reality scan. However, the meal plan can be developed in the future.

Pulse has the potential to grow and incorporate other health elements. I would consider designing an external device to measure and track other health-related factors. It could be a wearable device such as a ring or patch that would allow the user to constantly track their overall health rather than manually measuring it at one time.

What's next

Now that I am halfway through the masters, I am excited to start the next module, Co-creative Design and Development Practice. One of my future goals is to experiment with working in a team and collaboration on a project. I am intrigued to learn from others and enhance my practice and skills.

References

BODROGI, Peter. 2003. ‘Chromaticity Contrast in Visual Search on the Multi-Colour User Interface’. Displays 24(1), 39–48.