For once my reason for not staying on schedule with posting here is because I’ve been doing the things that I always talk about doing 🙌🏽
Projects to practice with
For me, the hardest bit about practising UI/UX design skills is not having a project to work on.
I’ve got a number of Trello boards with lists of ideas for projects, big & small.
They remain as list items because I’ve not done them.
Why not you ask?
Well, I realise now that I don’t actually enjoy planning. It’s a necessary stage, and at work, I get in amongst it.
But when it’s my own time/projects – I don’t want to do it.
Being directed
In the last few weeks, I’ve been getting my teeth into some of the projects with the Scottish Tech Army (STA), and as much as I’ve got things to say on the planning side of things, I get to spend more of my energy working on the designs themselves.
Each of the projects I’m involved with has already been underway for some time – so the majority of the big planning work has been done.
Now that I’m sticking my nose in, I naturally ask all manner of questions that have probably been covered already. I do this to make sure that I’m understanding everything properly so that I’m on the same page as the rest of the team.
Once that’s done, I can get into the fun stuff.
Finding the flow state
This evening I’ve clocked up just shy of 3 hours working on 1 STA project and despite having also done a full days work ‘in the office’, the time flew by!
Task flows and wireframes, that was the majority of my visual output. Combined these visuals will be the backbone around which the interactions and screen designs develop – and I’m looking forward to increasing the fidelity for them.
I’m also looking forward to the time when I can share this work.
I’ve been keeping track of the progress steps, but for now, they need to remain hidden away. Once the work goes live I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to share my efforts and show just the sort of thing that other designers can get out of volunteering with projects like this.