My MHCID Journey at UCI
Improving my Design Thinking & Sketching
For these sketching activities, we used the book "Sketching User Experiences Workbook" by Bill Buxton. The companion book was also part of our pre-reading before the start of the MHCID program. We brainstormed and reflected before and after our sketching assignments. We learned to become more comfortable with our sketching skills, letting go of the need to make everything look "pretty" or artistic, and understanding the importance of sketching out our ideas. By using timers, we focused less on aesthetics and more on functionality, getting into the groove of iterating multiple ideas. The lectures and combined activities helped us as HCI students to integrate design principles into our sketching as we progressed.
S1 Sketching & Learning Pod
10 Plus 10 Method
After finishing the Crazy 8s, which involved iterating many ideas for a UCI front and back student ID card that included all the criteria in the designs such as name, photo, the UCI mascot Anteater (Peter the Anteater), ID number, and so on, I included a QR code and a couple of vertical designs. We were then tasked with using the 10 plus 10 method described in Bill Buxton's Sketching for User Experience. This method requires the designer to create 10 different ideas and then focus on one favorite design, developing it further by creating 10 more iterations. This approach can be applied to a product, interface, or various items—the possibilities are endless.
Later on we took our Crazy 8's UCI ID cards we designed and digitally created how they would look like. Producing a high fidelity version using Figma (Figma tool was the popular choice but we weren't restricted to just using Figma)
S2 Sketching & Learning Pod
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Our learning pod team progressed as we spent more time in our breakout rooms following a live lecture. We progressed because we selected our roles and arranged contributions when creating a team contract. We became more confident as we attended more lectures and spent time building our group relationships. We became more eager to share our sketches in our learning pod slack channel not just from the sketching assignments but also what we created from the live lecture activities. As the learning continued we began discussing more complex HCI principles as well as the various methods. During this journey, our confidence increased and we became comfortable to share more feedback and ideas.
Our second-day sketching assignment was scribble sketching. A rapid way to generate and translate ideas into various interfaces, products, and commodities.
One of the design activities I loved the most was taking our ID card sketches and making a prototype in Figma and the storyboard we made using Google Slides to see all the students' cohort creativity and how they made their sketches into a digital artifact to practical solve problems.
Design Thinking Activities & Problem-Solving
Figma Wireframe & Prototype
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