Recent Lessons

I recently discovered the benefits of writing as a design tool to help me understand and explain my own ideas. I keep a design journal for my projects where I write everything down using only words and as if there are no accompanying visuals. Writing has helped me with idea exploration, organizing my brain to uncover thought processes, and more clearly communicating design decisions.

One quarantine hobby I picked up is learning Spanish. I recently set my phone’s language to Spanish to practice, and it was a great reminder that people are using Spotify with many different language and accessibility settings enabled. It’s important to keep these in mind when designing for an incredibly diverse user base!

Recently, we started pairing up designers to work together remotely, so I’ve had the chance to do a few real-time sketching sessions on the iPad (Jamboard and Procreate) with my peer Designer and UX Writer. Using a core design craft like sketching has really helped to nitro boost design-thinking and decision-making. Coming from a more ‘visual’ background, this has also helped improve my strategic thinking skills and my confidence with the early-stage design process.