Reflecting on the Guide project
In the past year, the Guide project has been a tremendous opportunity for me to grow as a UX professional and experience the realities of collaborating on professional work.
Over the course of 9 months, I experienced the complete lifecycle of a digital product, beginning with market research and ending with a fully functioning, high fidelity prototype. As part of a diverse team of six students of greatly differing educational backgrounds, I quickly learned the importance of leveraging individual contributors’ strengths and accepting my own weaknesses. In many instances, I found myself working across time zones we collaborated with research participants, prototype testers, and of course, our client.
One of my greatest takeaways from the project was just how broad an array of tools are available to us as user experience designers. As I shared in one of our class presentations, UX professionals shouldn’t fear tech; there are endless opportunities to explore new tools as part of the design process. Effective UX design requires a multitude of skill sets, so it’s helpful to leverage team knowledge of different software and technology platforms. As an example, I used a combination of eight distinct tools for the process of interviewing research participants and converting my findings into elements of our designs.
