Project: Fresh Market
This project allows designers to encounter each step of the design process. In doing so, designers will gain a better understanding of how good UX can elevate our Interface solutions.
At multiple points on this journey, students will interact with real users to understand how they use products and services. These conversations will help shape the direction individual projects will take.
This is a self-paced project and involves at least 100 hours of work to complete. The number of weeks that takes will depend on the amount of time you can commit each day.
Designers who have completed the User Experience and Interface Design curriculum will move faster as the project builds on top of previously acquired knowledge.
Kickoff
Successful product designers do their homework, focus on the user, and avoid taking shortcuts. It's the only creative exercise that involves risk minimization.
Observational Research
Even in an age of social distancing, people require food.
Stakeholder Interviews
Regardless of what the market says, the people behind a project have a vested interest in your endeavor’s success.
Competitor Research
The fable of the solitary genius that innovates in a vacuum is a dangerous myth when your job is to create competitive products
Surveys
Nobody wants to say it, but surveys can be incredibly valuable when they are used appropriately.
Competitor Testing
Find out what triggers use and abandonment by having users test the market that already exists
Competitive Analysis
The data collected from users and competitors might seem like a mess, but you've already collected the ingredients needed begin moving forward.
User Interviews
While these meetings may take a chunk of time, you'll often be rewarded with unexpected, high-quality revealations from your participants.
Affinity Diagrams
Time to rein in the data collected and allow themes to dictate where to go next.
Personas and Scenarios
It’s easy to deliver value for your users if you’ve bothered to listen to them along the way.
User Stories
Before you can create a product, you first have to define what needs to be built.
User Flows
Expanding tasks into solutions will require more than just defining the happy paths along the way.
Story Mapping
Most products are built in stages, but determining what parts are built first matters greatly to the success of your work.
UX Writing
Articulatng why something matters is often just as challenging as creating the product itself.
Sketching
The transition to the visual solution isn't a moment to slow down. In fact, this is when we speed up.
Wireframing
The overall form of a project must be determined before you can begin to address the details.
Microcopy
Developing the ability to anticipate where the user may struggle and delivering guidance before they tumble into disaster is a product design superpower that never goes out of style.
Prototyping
The potential to evaluate progress with actual users is unlocked when the work is woven together.
User Testing
Once we accept that all products are flawed to some degree, it becomes easier to hunt for our issues.
Visual Foundation
Visual tone is more exploration than science and while there are no wrong answers, your prior research should guide you to better solutions.
Branding
Creating a brand can seem like an exercise in designer alchemy until you accept branding as more process than opinion.
Styles
Proper tooling allows you to operate faster, which is needed as prototypes become more expansive in scope and detail.
Components
They seem like a huge investment upfront, but components easily save you and your team hours of work over the course of a project.
Testing, Round 2
A complete different set of nerves are now on display. Will your visual additions make or break the experience?
Prototype Update
It takes bravery to test your product. It takes a dummy to ignore the results.
Case Study
Ultimately, every project comes down to what you learned. Provided you show what you have learned, no project can be a failure.