Foreword
In typing this out, I struggled to put everything I’ve learned together in a cohesive, beautifully written long-form paper — Instead, I’ll bullet point out some of my biggest takeaways from this quarter, in no particular order. Afterward, some general reflections.
Learnings
- Right off the bat, I’ve learned new frameworks and approaches to ideation that are more inclusive and considerate of all those participating. I will never again lead a brainstorming session by having group members “call-out” ideas in a setting where “no idea is a bad idea” because I’ve learned that this can be totally exclusive, even if the intentions behind the approach are well-meaning. I also will be using all the new post-it sorting techniques we’ve learned during most brainstorming sessions from here out. In fact, the very next week after that lecture I used timelining to arrive at a framework during an interview design challenge (click here to see the full thing if interested, but fair warning: it’s long. Timelining stuff starts 4 slides in)!
- On a personal level, the concept of anchoring and learning how to establish lasting habits has been completely game-changing. My initial motivation for taking this class was rooted heavily in a desire to start taking my dang immunosuppressant pills every day — a habit that I had failed many times to establish. After learning about anchoring, I now keep my pills with my toothpaste, and I never have an excuse to not take them. While there are still days I forget, I’m much more consistent with it now than I ever have been before.
- On a lighter note, I’m also taking away a new method of taking notes that has now bled into my note-taking in all other classes. While I haven’t fully committed to sketchnotes in contexts where recording fine detail is important, it has become a staple in many of my lectures! It really is crazy how looking back at sketchnotes unlocks a bunch of strong, concrete learnings from the day I took them. In times where it’s most important to just take away the big ideas, I’ll from here on out always turn to sketchnotes.
- Perhaps most importantly, I’ve become much more conscious about the ethical decisions that go into every single design. I hadn’t before truly considered the far-reaching implications of the implementation of a streak or badge system for motivation, or even the simple choice between having a user opt in or out. I’ve come to realize that as designers we’re making far more ethical decisions in every design than I had previously realized, and I’ll be more conscientious moving forward, being sure to give each design decision the thought it and its users deserve. I also imagine that these decisions are even more frequent and prevalent in game design, so I’m really looking forward to hashing that out next quarter!
- In a similar vein, I’ve become more used to the idea that ethics in design are not black and white, no matter how badly we might want them to be. Simply by virtue of discussing different ethical dilemmas every week, I’ve learned to better navigate these conversations, weighing pros and cons and exposing myself to new points of view. Beyond a few guiding principles for evaluating ethical decisions, I haven’t necessarily learned more about how to establish what objectively is or isn’t ethically wrong, and I think that’s the point: these decisions almost always exist on an ethical spectrum, and it’s up to us to make sure we do our due diligence in choosing an approach for each unique case.
- I’ve learned how to implement and the value of early-stage studies to validate ideas quickly and iterate upon them more efficiently, as opposed to the normal approaches in UX design I’ve become accustomed to. I’d previously only been exposed to various methods of usability testing, from lo- to hi-fidelity, but had very rarely done significant testing any earlier. The standard process to this point had mostly been (1) user interviews to establish a need, and then (2) the development of a prototype to solve that need, followed by (3) heaps of iteration. Being exposed to diary and intervention studies has opened a whole new world of potential learnings between steps (1) and (2) that can allow for better solution-finding. I’m excited to take 247G to get more practice in this area!
- More abstractly, I’ve also gotten a better sense of what it looks like to practically work with developers and hold conversations about what is or is not feasible. In Product Design classes, we typically approach problems and develop novel solutions without regard to how they might actually be implemented; it was really interesting to be exposed to another mode of thought through working with four CS students who were more pragmatic in their approaches to designing a solution, even though we weren’t actually coding the product.
Extra Thoughts
What did you love? What did you hate?
I loved working with my group, genuinely. I looked forward to each and every meeting, felt like we were all aligned on our goals and priorities as a group, and all held each other accountable. I loved working with folks outside of my major and really enjoyed getting to meet some new friends along the way. I also loved that I understood the meaning behind each and every assignment: for the most part, nothing felt like busywork. Lastly, I also loved all the resources shared in Slack and on Canvas; it made me feel like there was always something more to learn if I had extra time or was interested. One of the biggest things I’ll miss about this class is the constant flow of interesting articles to read (if there’s a way to subscribe, I’d be totally in, LOL).
I hated how there was so little time to work on the final prototype compared to other aspects of the research! I understand that there’s a lot to cover in the way of research, but I feel that there was also a lot more learning that could’ve happened when it came to actually designing the final product. In this way, the final app felt less like the culmination of all the hard work we had put in all quarter and more like just another assignment we needed to get done. Providing a little more structure around creating the app and giving some more time for iteration would have gone a long way, in my opinion. Keep in mind that this is coming from a product designer specializing in UX design, however, so my goals might be very different from the average student taking the course :p As a suggestion, I think that a comparator study in the form of looking at the layout and design of other apps would be tremendously useful. Maybe outlining the main flows you need in your app, and then analyzing several similar flows and layouts in other apps. I think that this simple exercise would guide everyone towards designs that were more industry-standard and would be a great time to begin to understand how things are normally done (my hunch is that this would also lead to final apps that are more impressive to hiring managers looking at portfolios).
I wish that the ethics discussions on canvas received more feedback, or were carried a bit further in class. I really liked how toward the end of class we started to incorporate the questions we had asked! Adding “…and give a short response to the response above yours” would in my opinion go a long way toward making each poster feel heard, though I guess that is extra work.
Words for the teaching team
No class has ever made me feel more supported than this one. At every step of the way, I appreciated how you all were willing to take the extra mile and truly meet us where we were at. From constantly adjusting the course based on feedback to creating a glossary for our benefit and constantly sharing great articles, I could really tell you cared. And knowing how much extra work that requires on your end, it means a lot.
Thank you for a wonderful quarter and see you in the Spring!
