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Welcome! Please hang tight while we wait for everyone to join.

Sign-in at https://tinyurl.com/fall21-app-workshop

O P E N M E E T I N G

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We’re recruiting!

Application:

tinyurl.com/di-fall2021-app

For events & updates:

Instagram & Facebook: @davisdesigninteractive

Website and newsletter: davisdi.org

O P E N M E E T I N G

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Application Workshop

Fall 2021

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Nadia

Co-President

Cheryl

Co-President

Shirley

VP Operations

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Fall 2021 Recruitment

Application Workshop

Cohort Applications Due

Fellow Applications Open

Fellow Applications Due

9/27

9/29

10/3

10/4

10/8

Fall 2021 Info Session + Cohort Applications Open

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Cohort Application

Due: Sunday, October 3 @ 11:59 PM (PT)

Design Challenge
Written Application

Need help getting started? Come meet us at office hours!

tinyurl.com/di-fall2021-app

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Fall 2021

Design Challenge

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Design challenge prompt

MyBill is a website that allows UC Davis students and authorized users view their bills, make payments, and manage student accounts. However, the site can be confusing and with something as important as paying tuition, a confusing site can lead to detrimental mistakes.

How might we refine the student experience of paying tuition and bills through MyBill?

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Who are the users?

MyBill is used by...

UC Davis students
Parents/guardians

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Tips for getting started

Walk through the process of paying tuition from beginning to end
Talk to other students about how they pay their bill & tune into the key moments they experience
Consider all the ways one might approach their bill payments

E.g students who pay bills in full at once, students who pay in installments

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How to Approach the Design Challenge

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General guidelines

Submission format: Google Slides

Max: 8 slides, not including the title slide

Create a digital solution

Tools: Figma, Adobe Xd, Sketch, etc

Make it a story of how you solved a problem!
Have fun with it!

Shirley

General guidelines

You’ll be submitting your completed design challenge in the format of a Google slide deck, talking about your process. We want to know how you got from the prompt to your final solution.

Please limit it to only 8 slides. So don’t feel like you need to make this really long and complex, we understand that there is a time constraint. The title slide won’t count to the maximum number if you want to include one.

You’ll be creating a digital solution.

This is where you can show your proficiency in Figma or other design tools like Adobe XD or Sketch
And of course, utilize the many resources available to you online

Next, we want you to make it flow like a story of how you solved a problem. A good skill to have as a designer is storytelling. So with the slide deck, think of it as a storyline of how you approached the challenge.
Most importantly, have fun with it! Learning design can be fun and as a designer you’ll always be solving problems and learning new things. So this is a great opportunity to do so

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Getting started

Think about your past experiences

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Getting started

Think about your past experiences
Research - talk to people, look at articles, etc to gather insights

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Getting started

Think about your past experiences
Research - talk to people, look at articles, etc to gather insights
Sketch ideas out on paper

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Getting started

Think about your past experiences
Research - talk to people, look at articles, etc to gather insights
Sketch ideas out on paper
Utilize Figma and accompanying free online resources

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Human-centered design process

Source: movingworlds.org

Empathize

Learn about who you’re designing for.

Define

Define the problem. What are the user needs?

Ideate

Brainstorm ideas and create solutions

Prototype

How do these ideas work? Build a representation of your idea(s).

Test

Test your ideas and get feedback.

Nadia

This is a framework that people in the industry use to guide their process. They try to:

Learn who you’re designing for.
To create good user experiences, you need to empathize with your audience and understand their behaviors/ put yourself in their shoes.
This part of the process would include researching and identifying common pain points
After empathizing with your end user and identifying pain points, designers will define problems based on what the users need.
Since you’re also typically working in a business context, you’ll also define what business goals you’re helping to accomplish by solving these problems, which might be (increase revenue or getting more people to use the product??)
Then, designers will move into exploring different solutions.
It’s important to be intentional with why you are making decisions here because your goal is to help solve a problem, so you’ll go back to what your data revealed about your users and incorporate those insights into your designs.
In order to see if your designs will work, we’ll need some kind of representation of it, which might look like a sketch or a digital mockup.
In this part of the process, we want to make our ideas tangible and come to life
Now that we have something that we can get in front of real people, testing your ideas will determine if it actually solves your users’ pain points.
The feedback you get from this stage will help you refine your designs, and depending on your timeline you may go through multiple rounds of testing!

This seems really linear, and oftentimes you’ll jump around these stages a lot in reality. For the purpose of the design challenge and if you’re new to design, it’s good to practice this to understand UX methodology.

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Low-fidelity

Sketch

Mid-fidelity

Wireframe

High-fidelity

Wireframe

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We are not looking for the craziest ideas or the most perfect solution.

Instead: What problem am I solving? Why am I doing this?

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Things to keep in mind

User-centricity — Determine the problem the user is trying to solve and integrate a clear solution through their work.

Visual/Interaction Design — Show an understanding of visual design principles and aesthetic taste/style.

Communication/Professionalism — Articulate your process and design thinking in a clear manner.

Problem Solving — Translate findings into actionable, innovative solutions.

Creativity — Develop original, adventurous, thoughtful, impactful solutions.

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Questions?

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Let’s go through some examples from last year!

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Note: how you approach the design challenge may be different

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Fall 2020 design challenge

Zoom has become an everyday tool since the start of the year. We've tried to adjust to normal life on our screens, reducing our interactions and experiences from what they actually would be like in person. We've often used Zoom for:

Facilitating remote education, from elementary schools to higher education
Maintaining personal relationships — at a safe distance!
Hosting online events and gatherings in the comfort of our homes

However, these experiences on Zoom can be improved. Identify a problem in one of these areas and explore how you might create a better experience on Zoom.

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Research

Have a goal in mind for the research you’re doing.

How did you pursue your research goal?
What insights did you discover?
Who was your target audience?

Nadia

So first is talking about the research you did. You want to note what method you used in your process. Here, you can see some did user interviews, some did surveys, and some did both. There’s also other methods of research to pursue like facilitating a small focus group, running a competitive analysis or doing a literature review and you can use the internet & UX resources --> There’s really no limits to this.

When you’re doing research, it’s important to have a firm research goal in mind. What do you want to uncover with your research? Who are you targeting? Once you have a goal, you can write down a few research questions. Here, they wanted to learn more about the pain points people have with Zoom.

You can also show and talk about the key findings you got from your research. Also, it’s usually good to survey or interview a good number of people, but we understand that your time is limited so do the best you can

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Define

Define the problem.

How did you identify this problem and why is it important?
What goals do you want to target for this project?

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Ideate

Understand your users and brainstorm solutions.

How did you synthesize data?
Who are you designing for?
What’s important to your users?

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Prototype

Based on your users’ needs and the problem, come up with solutions.

Do some quick prototyping.
Sketch on paper, wireframes, etc!
Test your designs with people & revise!

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Final Design

How do your designs solve the problem?

High-fidelity
Why did you make certain design decisions?
Emphasize your designs!

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Conclusion

What did you learn? What was the outcome?

Overall takeaways
Challenges
Next steps
Link to Figma file (optional)

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Your story is unique.

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Questions?

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Fall 2021 Recruitment

Application Workshop

Cohort Applications Due

Fellow Applications Open

Fellow Applications Due

9/27

9/29

10/3

10/4

10/8

Fall 2021 Info Session + Cohort Applications Open

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tinyurl.com/di-fall2021-app

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Thank you!

For updates and more information:

Instagram & Facebook: @davisdesigninteractive

Website and newsletter: davisdi.org

O P E N M E E T I N G