UXDI GM AIRWAYS
In August 2022 I completed a Professional Diploma in UX Design with the UX Design Institute. The course was a way for me to enhance my design skills and get updated with the UX process.
Course
Professional Diploma in UX Design
Year
2021 - 2022
Category
Consumer facing
Type of Work
– Research
– Wireframing
– UX Design
– UI Design
– Prototyping
The course was a 6 month course which I completed in my spare time. There were various modules and tasks I had to complete which gave me in depth knowledge into the UX process.
It was a fascinating experience and as someone who already had a background in digital design, the course really helped steer and shape my UX knowledge to where I am today.
At the end of the course I had to take a 2 hour final exam which asked a huge variety of questions from the course. I passed the course first time and landed some of my first UX freelance contracts in the South West of England and beyond.
Problem solving and finding solutions on how to better a users experience when using a site or product has always been an area I am extremely passionate about.
During the course various projects were completed to show the full UX process and background information to display how I go to the final solution. The project I completed was based on an airline booking user flow. The reason I selected the airline was due to it being a familiar process with a lot of users.
The first step of the process for me was to research. This first step involved competitor benchmarking, I marked up areas of competitor sites with red and green labels and wrote notes explaining the reason behind my thinking.
Following on from benchmarking I listened to previously recorded usability tests that were supplied and started note taking. While note taking, I made sure to timestamp positive, negative and observational comments. This allowed me to easily find the point in the recording quickly and easily for when I came back to it further into the process.
The next step in the research phase was for me to host some remote usability tests of my own to find out how users get on with two airlines websites that I chose. Each test lasted around 1 hour and I set the user some tasks to try and complete.
Before the usability test started, I let the user know what to expect throughout and reinforced that although I am observing, if they run into any issues, it's not their fault, it's the site. This would help the user feel at ease while being observed and not let them get self conscious if they run into any friction.
While they were completing the tasks I would observe what they were doing and if they did anything out of the ordinary, I would ask them some questions to try and dig a bit deeper into their thinking or reasons for doing something the way they did.
With all of the research I had completed, I was now able to go over everything I'd pulled together and start card sorting and arranging cards into an affinity diagram. I mapped out the diagram using Miro and this allowed me to start seeing patterns in user behaviours and friction they were running into while using the sites.
Using the affinity digram, I created a customer journey map. The information in the customer journey map reflects the most common positive and negative experiences I found in the affinity diagram.
By creating a customer journey map it allowed me to focus on the areas of the site that were working well and the areas that needed improvement.
The next part of the process was to create a detailed flow diagram which included some more technical details which would be included in any handover notes for the developers to build out the site.
The flow diagram was also used as an aid when I needed to start creating wireframes.
Using my flow diagram as guidance and all of my research, I was able to move onto the next stage of the process which was to draw up lo-fi wireframes with design interactions. Once the wireframes were complete, I placed notes and annotations on the document which would assist in the prototyping phase.
Once I had my lo-fi wireframes complete, I was able to take those and start producing a mid-fi prototype. Following on from the prototype, the final part of the process was to write annotations for developer handover.
