“A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success.” - Rahul Varshney, Co-creator of Foster.fm

It's Final Year! ...and we're 253 days away from my final submission.

Final year has begun and we're straight into the IXD501 Module - Major Project Prototyping. The task for this week is to come up with 3 Major Project ideas. Soon enough I'll choose one of these ideas to research and develop for the rest of this academic year, hopefully producing my best piece of work to date.

Although my past year on placement has filled me with a wealth of knowledge and I enjoyed working in the 'real world', I'm excited to get working on a project of my own again. Allowing me to have full creative freedom, learn new skills and challenge myself along the way.

Personal goals I want to achieve with my Major Project;

• Placement really opened my eyes to the importance of User Research and I want to make sure it has a large focus on my Major Project.
• I'd consider myself as a highly illustrative designer and therefore want this side of my design skills to be shown through my work.
• I've tried on a number of occasions to learn Adobe After Effects, I finally want to get the hang of it so that I can produce smooth animations, ideally creating a promotional video of my product at the end.
• In terms of building websites/apps, I recently learnt the term 'No Code'. I'd like to look into this further, even if it isn't the path I go down for building my Major Project, it would be good to get more of an understanding of how 'No Code' platforms work.

My design process;

1. Ideation: Brainstorm ideas for my Major Project. Choosing a project that will showcase my skills, challenge me but most importantly interest me as I'll be working on this project for the full academic year.
2. Understand: Gather inspiration from what is already out there and think of ways in which I can improve on what's existing/fill a gap in the market.
3. Research: Identify my audience and understand their wants and needs from my project idea.
4. Design Discovery: ****Gather inspiration to create a brand identity and visual aesthetic for how the product will look.
5. Design: Work towards the screen design through developing physical sketches and digital mockups.
6. Designing Icons: Sketch and digitalise icons and/or illustrations.
7. Build: Build my product whether that be to a high fidelity prototype or using a no code platform.