UI Design Challenge — Am I Doing This Right?
One of the perks of attending and graduating from Flatiron School’s UX/UI Design program is being assigned an unbelievably attentive and involved career coach. You see, when a school markets themselves with a “money back guarantee”, it’s obvious there will be stipulations.
That is exactly the case with Flatiron. They offer a full refund of tuition, should you not find employment making “X” amount of money (depending on location) after 6 months of active job seeking.
Now, let’s define active job seeking. This is so much more than just submitting your resume on LinkedIn. With Flatiron (and assumably anyone who has mastered the art of job seeking), active job seeking requires a great deal of time, patience and dedication. At Flatiron, you are expected to reach out to at least 8 prospective employers/employees each week, participating in weekly design challenges and blasting blogs all over the internet.
Now, I am on FIRE and really rocking this job seeking thing…perhaps that is in part due to the fact that it is Wednesday of Week 1 in my job search period. Stay tuned for next weeks breakdown.
While I have been reaching out to people left and right, I needed to make time to try my first design challenge. I decided to hone in on my UI skills with DailyUI.
The Prompt
The challenge was simple and prefaced as a UI design challenge.
“create a sign up page, modal, form, or app screen related to signing up for something.”
My approach
I started by thinking about personalization when signing up for anything. I always appreciate an experience specifically tailored to me and my needs, especially if it is a mobile app. So I wanted to focus my energy on creating an onboarding questionnaire.
While sketching out different concepts, I was really playing with the idea of dueling objects or figures. It always feels like a pivotal fork in the road when choosing between signing up or logging in. I love this when also thinking about UX Vernacular, such as a “call to action”. It feels much like a mystic quest, and I dig it.
What is it going to be?
I didn’t want to fuss too much about the content of this fictional app, as I tend to get really excited about the ideation phase. As I ran my hands through my hair, puzzled by what I would create, I threw out the first thing I could think of — hair care — and ran with it.
“Hair care products tailored specifically to your hair type and desired style, shipped to your door when you need it.”
Why not, right?
Playing with Color
Enter the mood boards. I went with a bit of an under-the-sea (or under a blue light) color scheme and set off to Figma to make things happen.
My Designs
I bring you Lather a personalized hair care product that is tailored to your very precise and specific hair type and habits.
Prototype
Who doesn’t love a good prototype? I threw one together to show the login flow.
What I would have done differently
1. Color Change
I think I enjoyed the idea of the seafoam green and dark blue/green background more in concept than in execution. It seems to be more reminiscent of the only library catalog days with the green text on a black screen.
2. Too many screens
I spent more time on the flow, rather than spending time on the designs of just a few screens. Perhaps I would have achieved more innovative and creative designs if I honed in more.
Stay Tuned for next weeks design challenge and let me know what I could have done differently.
