APPLICATION DESIGN - PROJECT 2: UI/UX DESIGN DOCUMENT

-
24.09.25 - 15.10.25 (Week 5 - Week 9) 
Michelle (0373843)
Application Design / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Project 2: UI/UX Design Document
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Lectures

Week 5 (22/10/25)
Introduction to User Experience Research

Positive user experience (understanding what user needs) > advertising.

Conducting Research
Try to approach directly - In person experience: first-hand stories , more accurate info, not just imagery

Usability impacts everyone, every day - everybody have their own stories.
Clarity > features

Understanding behaviours, needs, attitudes - observation & feedback collection.

Role of UX Design
  1. Understand user goals, needs, motivation to use
  2. Understand how user interact with the current system
  3. Understand user emotions in using
  4. Evaluate & improve
UX Researchers Duties
Research method

Good UX Research:
Involving end user - create based on their real experience, not our assumption of it
Avoid biases, complete missing perspectives/information.

Tempting to outsource research - 

Integrating UX Research
Customized User Experience (Deeper, more focused) vs. Generalized Fit All (quantity > quality)
Faster, more revisions vs. Slower, less revisions

Repetitive corrections for higher chance of hitting the target (like archery practice). Very unlikely to have a final design.

Steps
  1. Objectives
  2. Research
  3. Methods
  4. Conduct
  5. Synthesize
UI/UX Documents 
  1. Survey (anonymus, concise) - honesty questionable: the less demographics collected, the more chance of honesty)
  2. Interview (feelings, stories) - Quality depends on interviewer's skill.
  3. User persona
  4. Card sorting
  5. Information architecture map
  6. Flow chart
Note:
  • Avoid leading questions > neutral
  • Choose method by considering context.
  • Reduce asking questions we already know the answer
Qualitative - interview & observations (impressions, to fill in gaps) - to know stuff we didn't expect/know about
  • Descriptive data (why?)
  • Patterns, trends (relying on the designer's POV)
  • Discovery
  • Interview, shadowing, usability testing, testimonials
Quantitative - data - to validate
  • Numerical data (how much/many?)
  • More thinking before
  • Testing, measuring usability
  • Surveys, A/b testing, NPS Scores, performance matrix
Treshold of Testing
Small quantity > polarized data, larger more assurance.
Interview : 5 person, find 3 persona
  • less, not inclusive
  • more, just reassurance
Hunch (gut feeling) - assumptions before starting > make a guess of solution
  • good: direction
  • bad: more about us, already known/exist
User research tear down assumptions

Open vs. Closed Questions
  • Open: what, how, when
  • Closed (short answer): is, does, which, when, who where
Interview Question Templates
  • First vs. Last times > What's the difference?
  • How do you feel about.. 
  • What do you mean by...
  • What's the best/worse about...
  • Why is that?
Interview Tips
  •  Ask to summarize - if we  zone out
  • Don't push through resistance (aware of what they're uncomfortable of).
  • Don't fill in the blanks, let them explain.
Research plan
  • Page 1 - Scopes
    • goals
    • timeline & schedule
    • participants
    • methods & logistics
  • Page 2
    • intro speech - reduce mumble
    • question list (consider the order)
    • outro & thanks

Card Sorting Method

= Information categorization > organization scheme - aligns with user models.
Influence website/app architecture, navigation design, content strategy.
Nielsen Norman - Father of UX

We can see how people think by how they organize. Depends on what matters most to the user.

Types
  • Open: Sort cards by creating their own categories.
  • Closed: Sort cards into predetermined set of categories provided by the designer.
  • Hybrid: Mix of open & closed > Determined categories, with freedom to create new ones.
Remote: via digital tools

Moderated vs. Unmoderated
Moderated: Facilitator is present - qualitative data
Unmoderated: Facilitator not present - quantitative data

Ask follow up questions
  • Items difficult to categorize?
  • Items which fit multiple categorize?
  • Reasoning why certain item belongs in a certain categorize?
Pro's
  • Ease of use & cost effective
  • Efficiency in gathering data
  • Direct user input
Con's
  • Dependency on participants
  • Content-centric focus
  • Time consuming data analysis
Features
Everything an app can do in an app.

Week 6
!

Week 7
!

Week 8
User Journey Map
Find opportunities on how to improve each step of the journey process, elevate the experience a bit better.
Focus on the highest & lowest points to really make a noticable difference.
Retrospective - story(what user doing now) before the app exist.

Make the output readable.
User journey map for each person.

Think of what the user might think of 

User Journey vs. User Flow
What they say vs. What they do

What matters to the person? What makes it matter to them

User Flow
Research on customer, competitors
Focus on what we want to achieve, less on the design
Review & update by asking others - different POV

Week 9
  1. Sketchmapping
  2. Notes - info
  3. Ideas (doodle) - solution
  4. Crazy 8's - variatons
  5. Solution sketch - details


What will be homepage be like?
1 flow - 6 screens
Interaction between pages? Scroll, pop up page, etc
Scrolling - can make the page long

Make it easy for third party to look through
Do all the thinking in research

index: all element created


don't overthink wireframe - to think of as many of problems as early as possible 
skip the log in, start from homepage

keep progress
keep inspirations, findings (things that exist already) - can show to client even before design - refine reference
refine and curate stuff 
find platform that allows us to safe stuff and propose new ideas: reference board (e.g. pinterest)

don't copy from 1 source. copy from multiple spurce until the source is unrecognizable to others > research

make one, reuse > consistency
label well > appreaciated by developer (tea

track duration - limit itme spent - don't fall to rabbit hole, wasting time - focus on target.
Mobbin.com
Behance.com - people showcase their portfolio
keep trends - what's new? what's been done now.



Process Work

Week 5
Draft research plan
interview & survey questions (open ended)
Fake Interview

Interview 
Intro
Hi, I'm Michelle. Thank you so much for  working on developing a language learning app.

What's your first language?
Do you speak any other languages outside your first language?
If yes:
  1. How do you learn new languages?
  2. What's the best language learning method for you that you find most effective and easy? Why?
  3. What's do you think is the most difficult thing in learning language?
  4. How do you keep motivated to keep learning language?
  5. How do you feel about learning language through an application?
If no:
Why is that? 
Have you ever thought about learning new languages? Are you interested to? Why?
Do you think technology could make language learning easier?


Duolingo & Language Learning App
  1. Have you ever used an app called Duolingo before?
    1. If not: Have you ever heard of it?
    2. How's your perspective of the app based on your knowledge?
    3. To question 4
  2. How do you feel about the app?
  3. What's the best & worse thing about the app? Why is that?
  4. Have you ever used any other language learning apps?
    1. If yes: What app did you use?
    2. What's the best & worse thing about the app?
Sign Language


Card Sorting
50+ app features - organize the way we think
mark by which ones most important to not.



    Week 6
    !

    Week 7
    !

    Week 8
    User journey map


    Week 9
    !

    Feedbacks

    Week 5
    General Feedbacks
    • Use AI to save time, but make sure to check since AI could have errors.
    • Starter Designers most likely will join a project. Rarely create a new project.
    • Designers pick the best out of many options > suitable to become managers.
    • Be the gateway between user to company.
    • Try to do direct interview. Get stories (what's the best & worse - things people don't think about in survey).
    • A beginner's value is lots of initiative rather than skill.
    • Don't directly ask what they want. We innovate for them based on info's gained.
    • Don't ask about the app, but ask about their life.
    • Check Don Norman on YouTube
    • Categorizing > make it messy for thinking.
    No personal consultation, time used to catch up with lectures.

    Week 6
    !

    Week 7
    !

    Week 8
    Don't need to make it pretty, make it complete - take all the space needed - no need to frame initially.
    keep flowchart straight, don't make it touch itself like the snake game. Avoid vertical layout. Good path straight.
    It's okay to be wrong. 
    Bring paper and pen.
    keep it simple


    Week 9
    !

    Reflections

    Experience
    !

    Observations
    !

    Findings
    !

    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    DESIGN PRINCIPLES - TASK 1: EXPLORATION

    -
    Image
    10.02.25 - 16.02.25 (Week 2 - Week 3) Michelle (0373843) Design Principles / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University Task 1: Exploration TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Instructions 2. Lectures 3. Selected Design & Explanation 4. Feedbacks INSTRUCTIONS LECTURES Elements of Design Fig 1.1 Design Elements (inspiration: https://www.onlinedesignteacher.com/2015/11/design-elements_91.html ) 1. Point (the simplest element of design) - Its movement in space creates other two- and three-dimensional figures. 2. Line - Indicates directions, define shapes and space boundaries, suggest motions, form patterns and textures. 3. Shape  (2D area) - Visible when a line creates an enclosed area or an apparent change in color, texture, or value (light/dark), could be geometric or organic. 4. Form (3D area) - Creates volume when it encloses space, in 2D media it must be ...
    Read more

    INTERCULTURAL DESIGN - CONTINUOS ASSESSMENT

    -
    Image
    07.02.25 - 21.03.25 (Week 1 - Week 7) Michelle (0373843) Intercultural Design / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University TABLE OF CONTENTS  1. Instructions 2. Lectures 3. Project 1: Proposal 4. Project 2: Field Study 5. Final Project 6. Feedbacks 7. Reflection INSTRUCTIONS LECTURES Week 1 (07/02/25) - Intercultural Design  In our first week, we are introduced to the module which consists of: information on the coordinators along with their contacts, learning platform, MIB, also physical and online meeting schedule. Then, we were given a lecture on Culture & Design , the summary are below. Visuals are: 1. Everything that can be seen (nature is not culture unless there's representation attached to it). 2. Everything produced/created by humans that can be seen which serves a purpose (e.g. has functions,...
    Read more

    DESIGN PRINCIPLES - TASK 2: VISUAL ANALYSIS & IDEATION

    -
    Image
    17.02.25 - 9.03.25 (Week 3 - Week 5) Michelle (0373843) Design Principles / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University Task 2: Visual Analysis & Ideation TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Instructions 2. Lectures 3. Visual Analysis of Selected Work 4. Ideation 5. Feedbacks INSTRUCTIONS LECTURES Visual Analysis Definition : A method to understand how formal design properties communicate ideas, content, and meaning trough its visual elements and principles. Practicing visual analysis improves critical judgement skills in interpreting designs/artworks. 3 Phases of Visual Analysis Observation : The process of closely looking and thinking, and finding the visual elements of a design on our own, without any research beforehand. Analysis : Reevaluate our observations on the ...
    Read more