Design Progress Logs - 1 YEAR 🌟
Hello fellow makers, just wanted to check in. This week makes up 1 year of my work as a product designer for BOLT.FUN and PEAK SHIFT! Couldn’t be more excited to write this!
Overall thoughts 💭
It's been an amazing journey. Honestly, how did time pass so quickly? At the same time, this year was one of the most challenging ones in my career, or the start of it, so to say 😊
First of all, this story is hard to write in typical PPP format, as it is very intertwined, the progress and problems I encountered can't be separated this time.
Beginning of my journey as UX/UI designer 👩💻
When I first got here, Johns asked me what I wanted to do. As a graphic design student, the natural thing would be to do exactly that. I got very interested in UX/UI design, so I told Johns that I wanted to learn more about that. And let me tell you, this is one of the best decisions I made!
What I worked on ⚙️
In this journey, I had the pleasure of working on 4 hackathons and contributing to BOLT.FUN platform by introducing and designing new features. A badge system, 3 new landing pages, a ton of visual material and new onboarding flow are just a summary. But more about these projects and the challenges I had to navigate will be more in-depth explained.
The first ever concept Johns introduced me to was design sprints. At first, I took time to understand the important part, which is to ask the right questions. I learned that this is a super useful tactic to get your thoughts on paper and figure out what assumptions we have are valuable, and how to navigate the whole UX process of any project. From creating user persona to user journeys and prototypes, I got a grasp of what it takes to successfully make a project.
Navigating hackathon designs was always fun, but very challenging and required adaptation from me, to be flexible and ready for the fast-paced rhythm of work and environment. It also allowed me to express my creativity through designing visuals for each event. But at the same time, it opened this whole new world for me of cool projects you guys put out and inspired me to stay consistent and push through the tough moments. This also taught me how to be a team player, and appreciate the support we have for each other here.
Working in a design system that is already established taught me to be organised and punctual. All fun designs and pages are cool, but it's nothing without structure and neatly organised files. Learning about naming conventions is something the whole team benefited from, as developers had to build my designs 😄
My favourite project in the past year 🌟
If I had to decide on one of the projects that is my favorite so far, it has to be creating badges and a badge system. The task was not easy, but I learned a lot about the creative process, and what it takes to push an idea into the finished project. I got stuck multiple times on my vision of how it should look, but with the amazing team and support of Johns, I realized that every setback or challenge is simply natural, and should be accepted.
What I’m doing now 🧐
My current work is on a new BOLT.FUN Onboarding flow for first-time makers who are joining us is a project that brought out of me all of the things listed that I learned. It required critical thinking skills I obtained this year. UX design is something that is still a challenge for me, but in this project, I felt like all the hard work in the past year paid off. I successfully created a prototype that is currently being tested. And usability testing experience and UX research I recently did is a whole new topic that I could write 10 more paragraphs on. 😅 I'm saving that for the project of this new feature, which is BOLT.FUN Onboarding ⬇️ https://bolt.fun/project/BOLT_FUN_Onboarding
A few closing words (might get cheesy) 🧀
I hope that this will be a fun read for somebody, or will be helpful for some of you stuck in this process like I was a year ago, trying to navigate and push through the challenges of learning in public. I would just say one more thing, consistency is really the key, and putting yourself out there and pushing your boundaries will open so many doors for you.