Week 27

This is the last Sunday before I finish my internship – meaning it’s the last time I’ll be writing my weekly diary. I still can’t process how fast it all went by! These past 6 months have been quite a ride and looking back I only have good memories to cherish. I have been feeling a little stressed out this week due to the uncertainty of what’s in store for me after I get done, but staying positive and hoping for the best.

There wasn’t a lot going on this week as we only had 3 days of work due to His Majesty King Bhumibol’s cremation ceremony. It was mostly finishing up the tasks from last week and other small work that I left off and needed to complete before I leave.

Make A Wish 

I started the week with rechecking the Make-A-Wish website and making sure all the changes that the clients asked for are done and everything is working perfectly. I found a few things still needed to be edited after going over the site and later asked P’Singh to make the changes. After he was done, I e-mailed the clients and finalized the time for the training.

P’Singh took care of the training session where he explained how the website is going to work and how they can add and manage the content. The whole process was recorded to give it to them as a reference. After the training, we e-mailed them the recording and with that our job with the project was officially done. There is just one final step before the website can go live – which is – to get it approved by the board members of Make-A-Wish USA as Make-A-Wish Thailand is under their foundation.

We also did a little testimonial interview with the CEO – Khun Aey, where we got her insights about the foundation, their plans for the future, and about their experience working with WCB. I had a great time talking to her and wish her all the best for the future endeavors.

SnowOnly Advertising Banners

After sending off the initial banner design to the client for feedback last week, this week I continued with the other 4 banners – leaderboard, MPU, Re-skin and Half Page. We are still waiting for the client to approve the main design before we can send them the rest of the banners. Hoping they will like it and there are no changes.

I ended the week with rewriting the article on how Make-A-Wish was designed – according to the case study format. I got two days left and that is the final task I have to finish before I leave. That’s all for now – looking forward to making the most out of the last two days here. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Week 26

The countdown begins!

It is one of the last times I will be writing my weekly diary as after this week I literally have just 5 more days till I am done with my internship.

This week consisted of various small tasks –

UX/UI internship checklist

I started the week with Carl asking me to update the WCB internship checklist for UX/UI channel. This is a checklist for interns to cover by the time they get done with their internship. As I was going over it I realized I pretty much covered all of it except creating main elements for a website and medium snazz designs in photoshop. I have been using Sketch the whole time for UI designs and I don’t think I will ever prefer photoshop over Sketch but I think it’s good to be skilled in both. So, these remaining days I will try to look more into using photoshop. Besides the points already on the current checklist, I also added some new ones which was practically all the things I covered in my internship.

UX/UI internship checklist

Teaching the steps of UX design process to Fabiola

I also got to be a teacher this week as Carl asked me to teach the 13 steps of the UX design process to our new UX/UI Design intern Fabiola. She already had some idea about it as she has taken a UX course in her university before, so it was easy for her to grasp what I was explaining. I went over each of the steps briefly with giving examples from real projects and telling her to choose a topic for a website and do the UX design for it by implementing the steps on it. In that process I also got a good revision for myself and can say that I know these 13 steps by heart now.

UX Design Process

UX Workshop at Thammasat University

This was another new experience for Fabiola and me to accompany Carl to Thammasat University for an UX workshop he was the guest lecturer in. The lecture too was on the steps of the UX design process.  The students had their own groups and project topics chosen, so after the lecture they were asked to start doing the UX design of their projects starting from brainstorming. I walked around and went to each group to help them as they were doing the steps. It was a great experience overall.

SnowOnly Advertising Banner

The task that occupied most of my time this week was creating advertising banners for the SnowOnly website. The client asked for five banners – mega banner, leaderboard, half page, MPU, and re-skin – which are of different sizes and specifications with having the same main design. So I started with getting the initial design right. The banner basically needed to have a beautiful picture of a purchased chalet with focus on the SnowOnly logo and a line of text. I played around with these 3 elements and created different layouts attempting to get the best looking banner. Below are the results:

SnowOnly Advertising Banner

Make A Wish Client meeting

The clients of Make A Wish foundation finally got back to us this week and asked for few changes to the website again before it can go live. They emailed us a list of changes and then we decided to meet in person to go over them and schedule a training day for them. The changes were basically cutting down on few pages and adding some new sections so I did not have to edit the design anymore, it was mostly Donn’s area of work. As Donn’s busy with another project, I went over the changes with P’Singh and he made the changes to the website at the same time. This week after they approve the edited version of the website, we are scheduling a training for them on Friday where we will train them on how to manage and add content to the website.

That’s all for this week. The upcoming week is the second last week of my internship and I look forward to covering all the unfinished tasks by the end of it. 🙂

 

 

Week 25

This was a very short week and though it went by very quick, I would say that I got a lot done.

I started this week with editing the Digital Marketing Professional course’s amazon affiliated websites for the students. Just when we thought we were completely done with those 9 sites, it came back to haunt us again! There were 3 major changes that I had to make on the websites. The first one was to insert another block on the footer to add the website copyright text. Initially we purposely did not add the copyright as the website is supposed to have a bad design but then as it is mandatory for any website – we had to.

DM Professional Course Amazon Affiliated Site – Edits

The second thing was to change how the blog page looked. Initially we had headings and texts in a normal organized format but I was asked to change it to a huge chunk of text so I removed all the bold texts and the indentation. The last thing I had to change was make the social media links open up on the same tab instead of a new one upon clicking on the icons. I thought it was an easy task but doing these for all 9 websites actually took up a long time. I used up the whole day editing the sites.

On Tuesday, I started working on the E-mail templates for the SnowOnly website. The client gave us an example to follow, so we basically had to copy the example and just change the information according to the SnowOnly website. There were two different email templates that I had to do – one is from a buyer requesting details for a property and the other one is an agent receiving an email from a buyer.

SnowOnly Email Template

There were a lot of things I had to keep in mind while designing this template as the developer wanted it as simple as possible in order to keep the coding simple and to have confidence that emails will display well across devices, apps and browsers. Like – not using css background images, sticking to basic cross-platform fonts, images should not contain important text, and having width no greater than 600px.

The next task I had for this week was to have a meeting with Andrea and discuss about the lo-fi wireframes for a branding and communications agency website. The agency already have a website and they asked us to redesign it in order to get more clients from the visitors and have a conversion optimization. Andrea had a rough lo-fi ready, then the whole design team came together and gave some really useful inputs before she finalized the wireframes.

UX meeting –  lo-fi wire framing

We added a lot more CTAs on every page and rearranged the content according to what we thought is the most important part of each page. After the lo-fi wireframes were approved by Carl, the next step was to digitize them and make it into a hi-fi wireframe. The website had 9 pages and it needed to be sent in to the client by Friday. As we had a holiday on Friday, we literally had one day to finish it all. It was impossible for me to do it so after talking to Poul, he saved my day by dividing the task between Teera and me.

Thursday was the most hectic day for me as I rushed to finish the wireframes but in the end we managed to get it done on time and that was a great feeling. I have also contacted the Make A Wish team this week to get an update on what’s going on. I really wanted to cover this project before finishing my internship but don’t think that is possible as the clients are still not ready with the content.

Besides these, I have been working on my own portfolio this week. After thinking of my options, I came up with the idea of having my own website as the portfolio. As I have recently learned using WordPress and DIVI, I thought it would be a great way to implement this new skill into something useful. I can’t wait to get it all done and show it to everyone.

 

Week 24

I LOVE DIVI !!!

After this week – thanks to divi – I can say that I can make websites by myself now (well almost!)

So as I was trying out a tutorial on how to build a website using WordPress and the divi theme last week, I started out this week with implementing what I have learned by developing the 1st of the 9 websites we had to make for the Digital Marketing Professional course students. On Monday, with the help of Joseph, Salman and I managed to finish the first website which needs to work as a template for the other 8 websites.

The 1st website – progadgets

After Joseph was done with the setup and hosting of the other 8 websites, I migrated and duplicated the first website with the help of a WordPress plugin called All-In-One WP migration and went off to finish the second website – procamping. By the end of Thursday, all of us together finished building all 9 websites 😀 It was a good feeling to be able to do that. I’ll have to keep this week’s diary short as it’s the only highlight of the week.

WP Migration

Besides that, I missed the Fun Friday this week due to having to go to the Labour Court to  complete some formalities of my old job. As my internship is almost done, Carl has been kind enough to help me look for a job. I need a good portfolio before applying, so I have been spending time on making my portfolio this past week. I get intimidated when I look into the portfolios of other UX/UI designers out there but also inspired at the same time. Looking at their work I think to myself – wow, this is just the start for me, still got a long long way to go!

week 23

It’s the 1st of October and as this week comes to an end, I am left with exactly one month of this internship. Finding it hard to wrap my head around how quickly these 5 months went by! The end is approaching and I’m still learning new things every week while growing as a person too. 🙂

The past week was all about getting everything ready for the 9 websites of our Digital Marketing Professional course students before we can start with the development process. It included getting the logo, branding, and UI designs ready. I worked on the logos last week, so I started this week with working on the branding – color schemes and fonts.

Adobe Color CC

Google Fonts

I used Adobe Color CC to create the color schemes and Google Fonts to play around with the font pairings. So glad that tools like these exist – they have truly made our life easier. I also got to work on making a Facebook banner this week which was something new.

Facebook Banner

After the branding, I moved on to do the UI design for the websites. The websites that we are creating need to have a bad design as the students will be asked to make it better. This gave me a chance to just play around with the design and colors – keeping in mind that it has to be similar to the divi theme.

UI design

I ended the week with exporting all the materials to the project’s dropbox folder and making changes to the UI design according to the feedbacks. I also spent some time testing the prototype of the On The Mend app on my phone before Joseph sent it off to the clients. The highlight of the week was to learn how to create a website using WordPress and the divi theme.

We will be needing to develop 9 websites this upcoming week so Salman and I sat together and followed through the tutorial to learn and practice how it works. I honestly did not think it was this easy to create websites using divi theme. The only challenge was to get everything to look exactly like the real website. At the end of the day, this is what I got:

Though it was not hard to follow the tutorial, we will only get to know the real deal once we start developing the websites from scratch.

Besides these tasks, I had a chance to be a part of an interview we had at the school this week for a digital marketing intern. It was an unique experience and talking to the potential intern made me realize how far I’ve come from the day I started this internship.

That’s all for today. Looking forward to make the most out of the last month I have here. 🙂

 

Week 22

I had a late start to this week as I got back to Bangkok on Wednesday and returned to work on Thursday. I thought the last two days would be hectic as I was gone for more than a week, but it was actually the opposite.

On the first day back I got updated with the new flow of the On the Mend app and where the project is at now. Thanks to Joseph, he finished the UX for me while I was away and now we are waiting for the feedbacks from the client to move forward.

Digital Marketing Professional Course – landing page

I had no new tasks on my plate so after spending some time going over the new On the Mend wireframe, I spent the day helping Joseph redesign the landing page for the Digital Marketing Professional course. The landing page was already looking good to me so I took time going over articles for inspiration and ideas to help me redesign it. I found this article quite useful –

http://thelandingpagecourse.com/landing-page-design-principles-for-conversion/

It talks about what a good landing page should look like and explains the landing page design principles.

After playing around with the old design, I made some changes and came up with this version:

landing page redesign

 

The next task I had was to help Andrea with the content of the Digital Marketing Professional course students’ websites. We basically have to make 9 websites in total for each of the student and our job is to get the content ready before Donn can develop the websites. I started off with working on the logo and branding of the websites. It was a very fun task for me as it was something different from what I have been doing for weeks.

Logo design – Adobe Illustrator

This task gave me a chance to work in illustrator and also made me realize that I need to practice it and work on it more as I was wishing I could make these logos from scratch. I ended the week with editing the 9 logos and exporting them in different size and formats, then arranging them into the dropbox folder. Later I moved on to working on the fonts and color schemes of the websites.

That’s all for this week, looking forward to a productive week. 🙂

Week 21

Week 21 has been a special week for me and before I get into that I need to tell you that it’s an even more special Sunday today. 🙂 I am writing this blog from a thousand miles away from Bangkok at my motherland Bangladesh! I am visiting after one whole year just to renew my visa and it feels so great to be back home even if it’s only for a week.

Now moving on to why this week has been a special one –

I got to see my first ever designed website – SEARM ( Southeast Asia Risk Management)  go live this week. 😀 If you read my previous blogs, you’ll know what went on to designing this website. It’s such a wonderful feeling to see my design come alive and I have to thank Carl and Golf for all the ideas and support they have given me throughout this project. Also a special thanks to P’Singh – the man who made it come alive.

SEARM website

Here’s a link to the website if you want to see the whole design: https://searm.co/

I learned a few things that I need to keep in mind the next time I design a website. Initially the website was not loading fast enough due to the header having multiple layers of gradients used as an image. When Poul went through the website and was doing optimization to make the website load faster, he advised to remember about this factor when we design anything. It later got turned into svg format so it was all good in the end.

On the Mend

This week too was all about getting the wireframe of the On the Mend app ready. I roughly did the lo-fi wire framing last week so this week I started off with moving them into the mockup screens. After I was done I had to cut and paste them on the board with labelling each screen. Then draw lines to connect each screen to one another to make the flow of the app clear.

It really did help to understand the flow more and point out the missing screens that were required in order to move around the app. I could not have figured it out if I did not put it on the board like this. After that I explained the whole flow to Golf and asked for feedbacks. She made some really good points like how the workout process can be made better and later I changed around a few things according to the feedbacks.

The next part was to put the lo-fi wireframe into UXPin. I spent my last days of the week working on that. Initially I was just copying the lo-fi and doing it in my own way but it wasn’t coming off nice. It did not look like how a decent mobile app would do as the menu bar, tabs, navigations and other elements I used from the UXPin library was not the right ones or of right measurements.

As this is my first ever mobile app design, Golf sent me some really useful links about iOS human interface guidelines and design principals to follow as an app designer. Here’s a link to it:

https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/overview/design-principles/

After checking it out, I got a good insight and went back to editing the early pages and doing the next pages accordingly.

On the last day, I tried to do as much as I could and then spent the last hours handing the project over to Joseph. He was only present in the very initial stage of the project where we were just getting started with the user journey, so I gave a quick overview of where the project is now and sent over all the materials to him. I felt a little bad to leave the project at this stage when it’s so close to digitizing all the work that went on for weeks trying to figure the app out but I am also relieved to get Joseph’s help on it.

That’s all for this week, hope I get the visa fast and get back to working and learning soon while making the most out of this trip now.

Week 20

This week has been very challenging and a bittersweet journey for me. The past few days have been quite tough but by the end of it I realized I learned a lot from them. It honestly seemed like time just froze as I was stuck with the same task for the entire week.

Here’s the task:

On the Mend UX design

I started the week with going through the client’s feedbacks and listing out the page elements. Usually when I did the page elements of other projects, I never had such a hard time putting in the details. This project is unlike any other ones I worked on before and no matter how much I tried I always had some confusion left. Regardless of the confusion, I tried to think in a simpler way and did it based on my understanding of the concept.

Then I searched and tried out a bunch of mobile apps which has similar functions and looked through their UI design for inspiration. It helped a lot to move forward with the project and start the lo-fi wire framing. I was going back and forth with the page elements and the lo-fi the entire week as more feedbacks from the clients came in. By the end of the week I figured out a lot more and roughly got the lo-fi of the main pages ready.

It was a challenging task for me as this was the first time I was working all by myself and getting stuck on a lot of things. This experience gave me a preview of what all goes on to being an UX designer. I am very thankful for this experience and the fact that I am learning so much. I hope I get better at it and that I get more things done this upcoming week.

Week 18

This has been a short week starting off on a Tuesday and went by pretty quick. The tasks I had for this week have been a continuation from last week. Here are the highlights:

On the Mend

After getting a brief about the project last week and starting out with the user journey map, this week we had to digitize the user journey so that it’s easier to look at and share with everyone. Initially we used the software called draw.io to do it.

After getting it on the software, we shared the first version of the user journey with everyone in the agency to get their feedback. When we received their feedbacks, we realized there were a few points which were not very clear so we revised it again and came up with the second version of the user journey.

Next, we received another version of the user journey done by Carl which was different than the one we did, so our task was to try and combine them both together. We then shifted from draw.io to UXpin as it allows others to add comments on the diagram which makes it easier to revise the feedbacks. This is the last version we did:

Meanwhile,  Teera and I did some research and went over all the materials provided by the clients again to get on with the user stories. We finished the first draft of the user story and shared it with Carl.

SnowOnly

Besides On the Mend, I worked on the UI design of SnowOnly simultaneously and tried to help Golf finish the advertiser’s page.

Make A Wish Client Meeting

This was a new experience for me to go out of the agency and have a meeting outside with the client. We had a meeting with the board members of the Make a Wish foundation where Donn and I presented the designs and took them through all the pages of the websites and their functionality. We were happy and relieved to receive positive feedbacks from them 🙂

Web Design Essentials Course

The week ended with the last class of the web design essentials course. I enjoyed the class a lot as we got to practice what we learned through the previous classes and got to mess around with other websites and design it in our own way. Overall, this course has been very informative and I can say it’s going to be very useful for me in the future.

Week 16

After a series of the busiest weeks trying to finish up projects, overall this week has been one of the most relaxed one for me.

Make-A-Wish Thailand Website

It was kind of like a milestone moment for me to finally get done with the UI design of the make a wish website. When I started the week I still had few edits to do and add finishing touches to the design. After I was done, I got it approved by Carl and sent it over to the clients for feedbacks on Tuesday. I was so relieved and felt like a huge weight was off my shoulder.

Make-A-Wish UI design

 

Article on how I designed the Make-A-Wish website

After getting done with the design, Carl assigned me to write an article about how I designed the Make-A-Wish website. On the article I summarized all the steps that were involved in the design process. From getting an overview about the foundation to meeting the clients to creating the final design, this article provides brief details about each of the steps. I also took pictures of the materials I used in each steps to make the article look better.

Article Writeup

 

SnowOnly UI Design

I ended the week with a new task which was to help Golf with the UI design of a project she is working on called SnowOnly – which is a website for selling and renting out properties in the ski areas. The website has over 60 pages so I am trying to help her save time and finish it faster by doing some of the pages. This task is fun as she has already provided me the template of the main pages and I just have to follow it to do the similar pages by copying the same design and put in the images and texts accordingly.

SnowOnly Design templates

That was all for this week. I am looking forward to the upcoming week as I would be joining in the web design essentials course and also be joining Carl along with Teera, Joseph, and Golf to an event about UX design this week. It’s gonna be a busy week again and I am ready!