Hey everyone. I am back. It's been months since my last post on here. I know. It's sad. I remember the last time I said I was going to stick around a bit more. But it didn't happen.
So, yeah, the job experienced a huge downsize that included me. And I think it was fine, especially since I only considered it a short term gig. And I wasn't under any financial pressure at the time so I was still good.
I didn't stop posting because of the wrong reasons. I've been away for the right reasons, as we shall learn in this post.
Learning UI/UX design.
The major reason I couldn't find the time to post on here was that HNG happened. HNG is a major annual internship opportunity for tech individuals in Africa. This year marked its 7th edition, they've trained a lot of tech people including Developers, Designers, Digital Marketers and the likes. I had to apply because I had a lot of free time and I figured I could use it to become better at what I was aiming for. I had mentioned how much I have come to enjoy designing in the past 6 months.
So, I signed in and I opted for UI/UX Design.
My Experience At HNG
My experience at HNG was bittersweet, particularly because the program didn't have the type of structure we thought it would. (you know, like a normal 9 - 5). Because of the high influx of participants every year, the program is structured as a competition, where participants who fail to meet the criteria for passing that level were dropped. There were no fixed times for certain activities, no lectures and no notes. All we had were announcements, tasks and deadlines for tasks. So, we always kept our eyes open for them.
Getting through the first two weeks felt like a cakewalk because the earliest tasks were pretty easy. And as expected, things got interesting as we progressed up the levels. By the third week, it started becoming clear which interns had grasped the basic rules and which ones didn't.
The tasks we worked on were on real projects that could possibly launch after the program. For each project, interns were assigned individual tasks and given a deadline. This required working alone on your tasks, and also collectively as a team. Each task came with its peculiar problems and differences and it can be pretty unclear what the task's requirements were at first. However, with the right approach and with plenty of questions later, it usually becomes clearer.
With so many apps and websites on the internet, it's easy to think that a designer's job was too easy since they aren't doing the codes. After all, they're playing with lines and shapes and texts and colours, couldn't we just replicate an idea on anything and it sticks.
However, it turned out that designing an interface for human use isn't that easy at all and it usually involves a lot of thinking and researching and planning in it. Oftentimes, designers need to become many things to be able to design the best solution.
A designer would have to read up and research stuff about the medicine and the medical field to be able to figure out how to design a solution that works best for the intended users and all stakeholders in that field. But that's just the preliminary part of the job. I also learned that a designer needs to possess good inter-human and communication skills. Empathy arguably being the most important. They are also required to sketch wireframes, draw up and test workflows, etc.
We had a rather interesting exercise during the program. It was the third stage and we had mentors who were placed in charge of projects as PMs (Project Managers). They were charged with attracting the right talent to their projects and the interns had to bid for positions to work.
As someone who has always valued stealth work, alone and at my pace, I thought it was funny. However, looking back at the experience, it taught me an important lesson about building good networks and relationships with people, especially in your chosen field. It was like seeking a real job, and not getting a position with tasks to work on before the weekend rolled by means you'd earn no points that week, which automatically meant removal from the program. Big lesson there.
So, it was 5,6 7,8 levels later and I could feel the weight of my eyelids. The program stopped being fun for me because I could barely keep up with other engagements in my life. We had a few interns drop out voluntarily for similar reasons. However, I was determined to stay the course, if not for anything, for the sake of being able to beat my chest and say that I saw it to the end.
I think the hardest stages for me were stages 7 and 9. Stage 7 because unlike the previous individual tasks we had, this one required me working side by side with a developer. And we were going to be rated based on three important criteria.
- UX. The design should address the brief and solve the problem clearly.
- Attractive. Should be neat.
- Live implementation by Frontend developer should be accurate.
Communicating with my developer was difficult at first because we were accustomed to different tech registers. She talked about endpoints and other stuff I didn't care to understand. I spoke about empathizing, getting the UX flow right, and Whitespaces.
This experience helped me understand that designing products wasn't about all the cool stuff I could do with a design tool. Working with a team requires an understanding of the other person's terms, as well as the tradeoffs that should be considered. I needed to understand my developer's skill set so that I don't design something they cannot implement at their level.
There are also business interests for the 'hypothetical' client (according to the project's brief). If a feature on a webpage increases the conversion rate, the designer would have to figure out how to include it regardless of how badly he/she thinks it would affect the final aesthetics.
I am excited that I got to the final stage of the program (Stage 10). There have been a few job interviews after that time and I am hoping for the best.
Onto The Next Ones.
Moving on, it'll be interesting what the rest of the year brings. For now, I've decided to continue working on improving my new skill with every opportunity I've got. I did intend to take a short break after the program at first, but who needs rest when you've got a shot at changing the world, right?
I think that being a UI/UX designer with good knowledge of the fundamentals of cryptocurrency is a rather interesting niche. It's way easier to see why a lot of people don't understand blockchain-integrated solutions yet. This is because there isn't a lot of them that are intuitive to common people. Good UX, besides proper marketing, can change that.
It's good to be back, again.
Here are a few snapshots of some of the projects i worked on.
