Weekly Roundup - 25th-29th September 2017

Weekly Roundup

Monday 25th September 2017

Start of the second week! Massive day in the office working with Shane to go over the UX review document I created last week. It currently has 75 points to review and make a decision to move forward with.

We were so intrenched in it that it got to 3pm and thought we’d better have a break to get some lunch. By the time we got back in to it, Shane had a meeting booked with Phil to go over the previous weeks work so I that gave me a chance to go back and get some design work in. The focus for this week is a profile page where it gives the user a bunch of info about a company.

Firstly, the business needs to decide what information they want to display on this page and sign off on it, once thats sorted I can then design the interface for how this will function. To get the ball rolling, I did some initial sketches just to get a few potential options of how I see it working and am now going through and designing the page in Sketch.

A lot of the elements that will be on this screen (and will be used throughout the application) have not yet been defined so that process will be included in this stage as well.

On a personal note, its my mums birthday today, so I left work and quickly shot over to the florist and get a big bunch of flowers before heading over to their place. One piece of advice from my dad that he gave me when I was younger that will stay with me forever was “Always look after your mother” so I do just that and spoil her with gifts and flowers. Spending time with both of them trumps any gift though, so I always visit at least once a week. It will become more frequent once we move back to the coast.

I launched the BETA version of the new Typeyeah. website over the weekend. I have spoken to about a dozen guys on Instagram and they are happy to register and test it out for me. I’m getting some lapel pins made with 2 designs from different artists in the community. I confirmed the order yesterday to get samples made so they should arrive within 2 weeks.

Monday Back Workout

  • Warm up 40kg Lat Pulldown
  • 4 x 12 reps 61kg Lat Pulldown
  • 4 x 12 reps 40kg Single Arm Iso-Lateral DY Row
  • 4 x 12 reps, 1 x 12 x 40kg, 3 x 6 x 60kg Single Arm Iso-Lateral High Row
  • 10 mins Cross Trainer

Tuesday 26th September 2017

Got a brief from Shane today to book out some time to review one of the main applications that PropertySafe offer called MMgr (Maintenance Manager). Most of the day was spent on UI design of more key pages.

Signed up to Invision. Another really cool application to help with prototyping the designs into a functional prototype that I can collaborate with not only the stakeholders on but anyone I choose to share the project with.

One of the best features for me is that I can export all of the artboards from Sketch and sync them straight to my Invision Project. I created a new project, synced my screens and started creating the prototype. This will be an on-going project as I work my way through the UI design.

Tuesday Chest Workout

  • Warm up 2 x 12 reps 40kg Iso-Lateral Super Incline Press followed by 3 x 12 reps 60kg
  • 4 x 10 reps 60kg Bench Press
  • 4 x 10 reps 80kg Iso-Lateral Wide Chest
  • 3 x 10 reps Leg Raises
  • 15 mins Sit Down Bike
  • 10 mins Cross Trainer

Wednesday 27th September 2017

Todays priority was to look over the MMgr (Maintenance Manager) system and provide a quick UX review around areas in the tradie profile section that can be improved in the next update. It is a massive system which makes it hard to recommend any ‘quick’ updates without effecting the whole system.

Later in the afternoon I got back into the project Dashboard pages. I did a review on the current user profile pages as this is an area Phil wants me to focus on this week as it really needs some love.

Checked out Optimizely. Shane has been working with it for a couple of weeks, seems pretty powerful and will definitely come in handy for post-launch. It allows us to do A/B testing on any part of the application. An example could be that we want to test which message converts better or which colour button converts better. We choose the metric we want to measure, create the variations and choose who we dish it out to.

After 5 is when the fun begins, I designed a new badge design and added it to the Typeyeah RedBubble page. You can check it out on the Typeyeah Redbubble page. I have a bunch of designs to add over the next few weeks.

Wednesday Legs Workout

  • Warm up 25kg Seated Leg Curl
  • 4 x 12 reps 55kg Leg Extension
  • 4 x 10 reps 20kg Leg Curl
  • 4 x 12 reps 40kg V-Squat
  • 10 mins Cross Trainer

Thursday 28th September 2017

Continued the UI design of user profile area today. I’ve found myself doing quite a lot of drawing to try and work out the best solution on how elements work on the page as it is a data extensive page.

Thursday afternoons we have a sprint retro to demo the weeks work to the stakeholders. At this stage of the project, it’s really hard to not allow scope creep in these meetings! We have to remember to stay focused on the MVP or MMP (Minimum Marketable Product as I like to call it) so we can continue working on the highest value features before launch.

Training is going well. Training at a different gym has really allowed me to ramp up my leg workouts. Those v-squats are a killer for me and I’m definitely feeling it today.

Thursday Shoulder Workout

  • Warm up Cable Raises
  • Warm up High Cable Pullback
  • 4 x 12 reps 54kg Rear Delts
  • 2 x 12 20kg, 2 x 12 30kg reps Single Arm Iso-Lateral Shoulder Press
  • 4 x 10 12kg Side Dumbbell Raises
  • 4 x 8 Hanging Leg Raises

Friday 29th September 2017

Today I completed the initial UI design of profile page, ready for approval. Meeting with guys who did initial branding. They had a look over the test environment the guys have been working on, totally different the UI designs I have been working on, so for me it’s pretty much a waste of time as its all going to change.

The UX Review for MMgr was due today, so I finished it and sent it to the guys for review. As I previously mentioned, this was just a quick look over the system to note any obvious areas that could be improved before the next release.

The rest of the afternoon was spent going over the UI and aligning all the typography to use the specified fonts that the agency proposed. There are still a few pages that will need tweaking which I’ll do next week before moving on to other key page designs. Not 100% happy with the line-height they proposed, i’ll keep tweaking it.

Here’s a question for all designers, who uses Color Bridge cards in their day to day work? Which set have you got? I’ve been wanting to get some for a while now as I’m doing a lot more design and print work lately and want to be sure the colours I’m using in design are the closest match to what will actually print out. I found this place online – Seaga Group, they seem to be the main dealer for the books (cheapest in Australia too) so I’ll most likely purchase the Color Bridge Coated & Uncoated set within the next few weeks.

Friday Workout

  • Warm Up Cable Curls and Trice Pulldowns
  • 4 x 12 reps 14kg Dumbbell Curls
  • 4 x 12 reps 14kg Tricep Extensions
  • 4 x 12 reps 65kg Tricep Press
  • 4 x 12 reps 46kg Preacher Cable Curl
  • 10 mins Cross Trainer