Week 07- Portfolio Cririque

This week we had a full portfolio critique of every student in the class. We were given feedback on our portfolio sites so far and at this point we should have had our home, about and 3 case studies completed.


Feedback I received

The main points I received during this round of feedback on my website was:

  • make sure all the text was all aligned to the same position.
  • space out the sections of case studies especially feedback section
  • ‘download cv button’ should be left aligned

Changes

Text alignment on case study pages

 

original

 

I added a blue line to act as a margin to show how much the text was out of line.

 

changed

 

 

I kept the blue line to show how the alignment has been fixed.

I think this makes the whole website look a lot neater and it’s annoying I didn’t notice how bad it was til it out to me!

 

Feedback section

original

 

 

 

changed

 

 

I think the new design of the feedback section is much much cleaner and neater. There is still a couple of alignment issues with getting the pink column to align with the paragraph text I will continue to work on.

 

CV button

 

original

 

 

changed

 

 

I agree that aligning the cv button with the rest of that paragraph looks a lot neater. I think in the future I will add more space between the paragraph and button just to separate things a bit more, the text is kind of all on top of each other at the minute.


What I learned from feedback and improving my design

I learned that feedback is a very crucial part of the design process and important for the improvement of my skills. This particular round of feedback I gathered really helped me see how others view my work on first sight. This was really insightful for me as at this point I had tunnel vision because I had been focussing on my own ideas for too long. Getting the chance to see my peers work and not focus so much on my own helped me refocus on what was important when it comes to a portfolio website- intuitive, organised, easy to read and follow.


Elements Project

This week we were given the brief for our next project of this module ‘Elements’.

Brief- Design and create a digital product to explain elements from the periodic table. We can either design for children or an undergraduate student.

The product has to be designed for a particular device:

  • Smartphone
  • iPad
  • Watch

Requirements for product:

  • Branded homepage, containing periodic table
  • At least 5 additional elements explained

Our first task for this product is to do a UX audit on similar apps and products.


Weekly Task:

UX Audit

To begin my ux audit, I first searched on google “periodic table university” so I could look in the ‘People Also Ask’ Section to understand what the user base I’m building for are searching in terms of the ‘periodic table’. In this section I found the question ‘easiest way to understand periodic table?’ This question lead me to a website that gave advice to students for this that I will use to help me in my product.

The original google search also lead me to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s website on the periodic table. My initial thoughts on this site was that it hosts a lot of information but in a slightly cluttered way.  This website also has a mobile app version which I looked into the reviews of:

Rishi said…

App is laid out really well, covers 99% of what people need, however colour choices could be improved.

Mitchell Jackey said…

Omits a few allotropes like metallic hydrogen and atomic numbers on elements.

The RSC periodic table app has very positive reviews overall and is something I will look back on during the development of my product, using this as the standard.

 

While looking into other periodic table apps I found the app ‘Periodic Table- Chemistry. This app was created by Chernykh.Tech and it stood out to me as it had over 5 million downloads with mostly 5 star reviews. Therefore I think it is a very successful and useful app to learn from. To find out points of contention users had with the app I looked at more critical reviews:

Marcus Wright said…

So zoomed in I can’t see the whole table at once. Scrolling through is slow and annoying.

Pratik said….

Give electronic structure and configuration.

I agree with these user reviews which is also why I included them. The app opens up on a zoomed in version of the table you have to scroll around to find each element instead of having the whole table pictured that the user can the zoom into and explore. The second review shows information on elements that users need/want to know which I should include in my product.

 

The creator of the previous app, Chernykh.Tech, made a gamified version of that app called ‘Periodic Table- Game’. This app has an overall rating of 4.5 stars over 100,000 downloads so it is a little lesser known than the last app. However since their first periodic table app was received mostly very well I thought this app was a great way to learn how other designers have gamified the periodic table.

My initial thoughts for this app is that I liked that it consisted of a level-like structure and it had lovely background illustrations. It presented the periodic table in a very visually interesting way rather than just a plain clicking through questions format.

To learn more about what other users thought of the app I looked at the reviews again:

Stephin Hugli said…

Very slow at getting to the next level, have to get every question right 14 times to enter next level

Thomas Reiley said

No clear directions on how to proceed

I downloaded the app myself to really get the feel of the UX and how the app feels to a user. I also found it quite hard to enter the next level, I didn’t even see that there was a coin amount I had to reach to reach the next level so I think from a UI standpoint that wasn’t made clear enough. The second review further refers to how the app wasn’t very intuitive as instructions or an option for instructions at any point of the app were not made clear. Reviews like this and experiences is what I will learn from for my own app.

 

Starting to design…

After doing this first step in research I began doing some sketches of what my product would look like and what I wanted from it.

I first started by describing the flow I wanted the user to experience when beginning my product. I used the information I had learned from my initial research to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After completing this I started on some sketches:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will develop these sketches further into some digital wireframes, then prototyping.


Little Thunder presentation

Tim from Little Thunder came into our class this week to give us a presentation about their company and their UX placement opportunity.

Tim explained that Little thunder is a small company that develops international projects, this  gives them fantastic connections to people all over the world.

Tim explained that they like to look at each individual placement student and give them work that would improve their individual skills, giving them and opportunity to gain experience in different areas. This sounded like a fantastic idea as I love doing projects and gaining experience in areas I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to gain before.

To finish Tim explained how to apply and to not send any CVs as he prefers to see each students work speak for itself.

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