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UX is Grounded in Rationale, not Design
During the past few weeks of my internship, I felt stuck and unmotivated. I didn’t know what I should be doing or if the work I was doing was worth the time I put in. How could I make the most of my time? I only have 12 weeks was the thought I prioritized over everything else. I felt so pressured by time to make something as fast as possible that I didn’t take time to let the learnings surrounding my project and the company sink in, and how I could use them to give me direction on my project. Thankfully, my manager, J.B. Chaykowsky, saw that I was struggling and suggested I synthesize everything I had learned so far. We were able to break down my learnings and start distilling them into constraints or “truths” surrounding the problem I am currently trying to solve. This experience has changed my mindset of how I approach design and my process.
When you frame the problem, it allows you to see the big picture of different directions you can take with your approach and evaluate your design with principles
An article Dan Brown wrote about practical design discovery really resonated with what my manager was trying to help me do. This was to frame the problem and take a design direction which would help me see a big picture of the what, who and how of the problem vs only seeing the granular details of how a design (aka a solution) would look like.
You don’t want to start drawing concepts too early
During the few weeks of my internship, I focused my time on sketching and making. How could I sketch solutions without understanding the current issues my user was facing, let alone the main problem I was trying to solve? Though I did do research surrounding the problem, looking at previous insights from users and such, I did not have concrete knowledge to back up my explorations and whether my solution would work or not.
Research is super important, but synthesizing that information to come up with new opportunities is even more valuable than making products…
